<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A Surplus of Wisdom by Aethelar</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24421426">A Surplus of Wisdom</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar'>Aethelar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU of an AU, Compilation of ficlets, Gen, Self-Insert, Self-Insert as Sasuke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:47:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>80,419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24421426</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A variety of ficlets, alternate futures, and what-if stories for my self insert, <i>A Lack of Wisdom.</i> Summaries are given per chapter.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dai-nana-han | Team 7 &amp; Uchiha Sasuke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>fics that hit different, oc self insertSI</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Sasuke in ROOT: Naruto</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23532889">A Lack of Wisdom</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar">Aethelar</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So! Most of these were posted in response to comments on the main fic or discussions <a href="https://discord.gg/dRx2cva">over on the discord server</a>, and, unless otherwise stated, they're all completely AU and not actually part of the story itself. That being said these ficlets will obviously contain spoilers up to the point in the main story that they diverge, and most of them probably won't make sense if you haven't read A Lack of Wisdom first!</p><p>To start us off:</p><p>What if Kakashi had decided Sasuke was a danger to himself, and removed him from Team Seven following the conclusion of the Wave mission - and what if Danzo stepped in?</p><p>Requested by fakeivy on chapter 12, contains spoilers up to the end of the Wave arc.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one knows the details of how Danzo took Sasuke and broke him. If Sasuke knows, if he recognised each twisting step, how it happened and how he was taken apart - if <em>Itachi</em> knew - the details aren't important. What's important is the result; not a year later, not three and maybe not even ten, but eventually, it will end. Broken things are sharp. Your own tools will cut you if you aren't careful how you use them.</p><p>Eventually, Naruto will make Hokage. When he does, Sakura will be beside him. Kakashi will watch from the edge and tilt his head in pride; Konoha will cheer. In the evening, when everything's quiet and the celebrations have died down, Naruto will pour one out for the teammate that should have been there but wasn't.</p><p>Suicide, Danzo went for. He made them think Sasuke had committed suicide. Kakashi never recovered.</p><p>The sake doesn't hit the floor. It's caught in a small cup of chakra, like a bubble, and hovers in the air.</p><p>"Hokage-sama," a voice says reproachfully, "That carpet is silk."</p><p>Naruto frowns. "ANBU?" he asks, though he'd sent them home earlier that night. He doesn't do anything so obvious as get into a ready position, but Kurama stirs at his fingertips, ready to fight if he needs to.</p><p>"ROOT," the masked ninja corrects. "You won't have heard of us. My ghosts know better than to be noticed."</p><p>"Your ghosts," Naruto repeats flatly. He can see it; the ninja's mask is blank white, and their whole body ripples with the same bubble-chakra that's holding the sake. It blocks their scent and distorts their voice, but it also gives them the faintest glowing outline. "People don't come back from the dead."</p><p>"Not with that attitude they don't," the ghost says.</p><p>"Besides," Naruto continues, ignoring the interjection. "I know ROOT. You were disbanded - officially when the third war ended, then actually when Danzo was killed." He doesn't let his breath hitch over that, though the memory stings. Whoever did it made sure that the many sharingan eyes Danzo had stolen were left gruesomely visible, and Naruto hasn't forgotten that they never found Sasuke's body. "If you are more of the same -"</p><p>"We're not the same. I am not Danzo." They tilt their head, then correct, "Maybe not quite. But you misunderstand; I'm not here to threaten you, or to offer to serve you. After today, you will not see my ghosts again."</p><p>"Then why are you here?"</p><p>The ghost lifts a chakra-outlined hand to their mask. "Because," they say. "I might be dead, but I didn't put this much effort into getting you here for someone to decide that now they get to kill you."</p><p>They lower the mask. Naruto forgets how to breathe. Half his brain is running through things he's never understood, missions he's pulled off that should have left him crippled, lucky strikes that never made sense - the other half is stuck on loop. His hair's longer. His eyes are spinning lazily red. There's a scar - it looks like someone tried to cut off his ear, and his lips are dry and chapped.</p><p><em>Sasuke</em>, he says, but it sticks in his throat.</p><p>"Don't waste good sake," Sasuke says, blandly, without inflection, sounding wrong wrong wrong now that Naruto knows who he is. He doesn't move, but the bowl of chakra holding the sake funnels it back into the bottle and then disperses. "And tell Kakashi to take better care of himself. He's not allowed to give up." It sounds almost like a threat.</p><p>"Sasuke," he finally manages, croaks, whispers, and even on that one word his voice is shaking.</p><p>Sasuke blinks. "Huh," he says, as flatly as he's said anything else. "I forgot." Naruto's pain-filled denial must've shown on his face because Sasuke blinks again, the way he always did when he was confused, when he was given a reaction he hadn't expected and needed a moment to process and Naruto knows those gestures, has spent whole nights reviewing them and mourning them because Sasuke had <i>died</i> - "We got new names in ROOT."</p><p>"What was yours?" Naruto asks, though he's not sure he wants to know.</p><p>Sasuke refastens his mask before he answers. With it on, he looks anonymous again, and even when Naruto searches for signs of him all he can see is shadow. "Itachi," he says.</p><p>Naruto closes his eyes in a moment of weakness and when he reopens them, Sasuke's gone. As he promised, Naruto never sees him again, nor any other of his ghosts, but he sees his handiwork - missions going right when they should have gone wrong, enemies dying of suspiciously natural causes, trade deals falling through and better ones being offered in their place. Under Naruto's leadership Konoha enjoys peace and prosperity like it's never seen before, and it's bought with a trail of cold efficiency and secrets that Naruto can never admit to.</p><p>Next time, when he pours out a saucer of sake for the teammate he lost, he does it for Sasuke's smile. As fragile and precious as it was, he doubts it survived.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mini Sasuke the Not-Ghost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On chapter 14, yourkayla asked what happened to mini Sasuke after running off into the grey world in chapter 1. The answer in the fic is that he's gone, but what if he wasn't?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sasuke runs. He runs away from his brother, from the strange woman who walked into the nightmare and replaced him, from the image that <em>can't be real</em> of Itachi killing his parents over and over again. He runs, and his home fades around him, the street turning to nothing beneath his feet and the red sky leeching away into an empty, stretching grey. He's in a genjutsu world without the genjutsu, and all that's left is quiet.</p><p>But what if it's not a genjutsu world? We don't know exactly how the sharingan works, but Obito's power is definitely dimension based. And with the way Itachi's warps time - that sounds like a dimension as well, doesn't it? What if it's the same one? The same big grey nothingness that's still and silent except for this little boy, running desperately through it and trying to find his family because last he saw they were all dead.</p><p>And every time Itachi casts Tsukuyomi, it's there, opening a pocket of red-black-white in the middle of the grey. The first time Sasuke hears it maybe he goes looking, but Itachi rarely uses his mangekyou to be <em>nice</em> so he learns very early on to stay away. The endless grey is boring, and lonely, and sometimes terrifying when he thumps his hands against his chest and can't hear his heart beating, but at least it's better than red.</p><p>Then... He finds the weapon first. He assumes it's a weapon. He doesn't recognise it. Like two flat circles squashed together with a long handle. It's just there, floating in the grey, and he stays with it because there's no point leaving it behind. The weapon is the first thing he's ever found, it's not like there's anywhere to walk to.</p><p>And, maybe, the first time Obito reaches into kamui and retrieves his weapon, Sasuke is left staring blankly at the nothingness where there was briefly a gaping hole to the outside world. He waits, but kamui never goes to the same place twice and he doesn't see it come back. But: Sasuke's determined now. He's <em>determined</em>. He tracks kamui by the flare of chakra it gives off, one that makes Sasuke's own red sharingan eyes spin in sympathy. It's not much to go on but there's nothing else in the nothing-world except for Tsukuyomi, and we already know Sasuke's avoiding that. It takes him... years, shall we say? Time passes differently here. At least a few years, but finally, <em>finally</em> he tracks down the weapon again.</p><p>And he waits. He doesn't sleep in the grey dimension. Or eat, or age, or breathe. For all intents and purposes he's dead, but he's dead with a sharingan, dead with a plan, and dead with a lot of patience. Eventually, Obito summons his gunbai again, and when it flies into his hand it has a bonus child attached to it, clinging monkey-like to the handle and floating a good twelve inches off the floor.</p><p>"Don't send me away," the child says, so fast it's almost all one word. "I don't want to go back. I want to find my brother."</p><p>Obito stares for a moment, unsure what he's seeing. He blinks the sharingan off; the child disappears, and he's just holding his gunbai. He blinks the sharingan on; the child is now floating in front of his face, arms crossed and pouting. "I want to find my brother," he repeats. There's an odd lack of echo to his words, and though Obito understands them, he's not convinced the child is actually making any sound.</p><p>"Tobi can help," he says, unsure but defaulting to his cheerful act while he works out what the hell is going on. "Where did the ghost child last see his brother?"</p><p>"I'm not a ghost," Sasuke says. "I don't haunt people and I'm not see-through. I saw him over there, but a long way over there. I don't know how far." He points in a direction that apparently means something to him, though given that he's just blatantly lied about being see-through and haunting people, Obito's not sure how trustworthy his statements can be.</p><p>"There's a lot of things over there. Tobi can ask though! What's the not-ghost's brother's name?"</p><p>Sasuke pouts further. Ghost or not-ghost, it's unbelievably cute. It's almost a shame you apparently need a sharingan to see him, think what it would do for Tobi's harmless idiot reputation to have an adorable mini-ghost tagging along behind him. "I'm not a not-ghost," Sasuke insists. "I'm an Uchiha."</p><p>Ah, Obito thinks.</p><p>"And my brother's called Itachi and I need to find him."</p><p><em>Ah</em>, Obito thinks.</p><p>"Do you know where he is? I think he had a mission. He's always on missions."</p><p>"Maybe Tobi knows," Obito says, his one eye wide behind his mask. "Maybe. Tobi might know. But, if you're not a not-ghost, then what does Tobi call you?" Because as far as Obito's aware Itachi only had one brother, and he was pretty adamant about not ghost-ifying him. In fact, last Obito heard Itachi was trying persuade Kisame to swing by Wave with him, because someone had sent an s-class missing nin after Itachi's brother's genin team and Itachi maybe wasn't best pleased.</p><p>"Oh," Sasuke says, blinking. "Sorry, I forgot. Um." He arranges himself into a very neat bow, and hell's bells, Obito recognises Mikoto's training in that. Even if it's currently bobbing slightly as it floats at eye level above the ground. "My name's Sasuke, please take care of me."</p><p>"Sasuke," he repeats faintly. God, it <em>is</em> Itachi's baby brother. Emphasis on the baby. Hell's <em>bells</em>. "Tobi can do that."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>... and I leave it up to you whether this is a very sad story about a lost little boy continually searching for his family, or whether it's a hilarious comedy about Obito trying to be Serious and Angsty and Bitter while his tiny cousin floats over his shoulder and tells him off for being mean.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Sasuke in Suna</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>At the end of chapter 19 Sasuke plans to warn the Kazekage about the invasion and rely on him as an ally against Orochimaru - and empressofcali said that if the plan worked, then Sasuke should peace out to Suna instead of running after Itachi</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Imagine, please, that we're in an AU version of the story where the shit going down in the next set of chapters does not in fact go down. The chunin exams end peacefully; Suna leaves Konoha as allies and friends. Sasuke, we'll say, does not leave Konoha. Not then, not with Orochimaru, not to Itachi. It weighs on her. Konoha is no safer now than it was before; sometimes she wakes up seeing faceless masks,  feeling phantom fingers reaching for her eyes -</p><p>But she doesn't leave. She stays, for Naruto, for Sakura, for Kakashi and Team Ten and the fish and the dogs and even for Konohamaru and his two gremlin tagalongs who call her neechan and bully her into buying ice cream for them in summer. She gets used to the tension in her shoulders. She sleeps with traps round her bed, even in her kitchen home. Naruto stays close and Sakura worries and Sasuke winds tighter and tighter and holds herself together with spite and doesn't break.</p><p>When the Kazekage calls for a diplomatic liaison, Sasuke says, "I like poisons." The others are doubtful so she presses further: "Kankuro said the way I use my chakra to move things is similar to chakra strings. Suna has the best puppeteers in the world. I want to learn."</p><p>"Yeah," Naruto says hesitantly. "But Suna's far. What if something happens?"</p><p>"They're allies," Sasuke points out. "The Kazekage's a friend. So are his kids."</p><p>Something is less likely to happen in Suna than in Konoha, she thinks, but that she doesn't point out.</p><p>She's not sure, in the end, if it's her arguments or Rasa's request that convinces Konoha to let her go. Maybe it's that diplomatic posts are meant to be temporary and her contract has an end date that will bring her home. The journey there is stressful in a way she's far too familiar with, because contracts have end dates but a lot can happen in six months and this might be Danzo's last chance, because Konoha's last sharingan is leaving and surely if he was going to take it the empty space between Fire and Sand would be the best place to choose - but he doesn't. She gets to Suna, and Gaara is stood on the wall.</p><p>"Konoha," he greets, tipping his head, and Sasuke tilts her own up in response and squints against the sun.</p><p>"Get off the wall," she teases. "You're welcoming a foreign diplomat. You'd think you'd act like it."</p><p>There are a lot of differences, she learns, in being a foreign diplomat. Rasa is fair, but he isn't stupid - he remembers how she acted against the Hokage and the Otokage both when she warned him, and though he respects her he doesn't trust her. It's debatable whether a Kage can trust anyone, but Temari's tongue is sharp in council meetings and Gaara's soft interjections are measured and thoughtful, and Rasa listens to both of them in turn and tries to do what is right. What he thinks is right. There will always be points where people disagree.</p><p>With Sasuke, he is cautious. She is the diplomatic liaison; she takes no missions, and is expected to be non-combatant. She is asked not to wander after dark, or through areas Konoha is not wanted, or outside the village walls by herself. In return, he listens to what she has to say, and watches her face when she reads the latest messages Konoha would like her to pass on. Sometimes she hides her reactions. Sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes Rasa dictates a response, sometimes he waits and hands her a scroll several days later that he tells her not to read.</p><p>She reads it. Of course she reads it. She's a ninja, even if the only battles she sees these days are the ones where she spars with Gaara. People think she's mad, at first, and the first time Gaara hurt her badly enough to draw blood - but most of the time, they're good. It's not the same as sparring with Naruto and Sakura, and Temari's biting wit isn't Shikamaru's, and even if Gaara makes a sand castle for them to lean against while they eat cold soba noodles his sand is not a dog and Sasuke still misses Bull.</p><p>But... She's warm, in Suna. She never was in Konoha. She's warm, and at night she sits on the curved-stone roof and watches the stars, and she wears loose clothing in light colours that swishes when she walks to try and hide her too-pale skin from the merciless sun, and she isn't afraid.</p><p>She isn't afraid.</p><p>"What's up with you?" Kankuro asks, turning back in confusion when she stops.</p><p>Sasuke blinks, takes a moment to re-orientate where she is - narrow street, striped awnings, a hanging pot with a drooping cactus that's sprouting one solitary flower and proud of it - and says, "Nothing. I'm... I'm fine."</p><p>"Geez, you sound so sure of yourself. What, is <em>fine</em> code for something in Konoha?"</p><p>She rolls her eyes and elbows him, recovering herself. "We're not in Konoha, dingus," she says. Then, to distract him, "I bet I could take Karasu down with a dango stick." He squawks in predictable outrage and Sasuke wagers the recipe to his latest paralysis gel on the outcome, and in her head she repeats, <em>I'm not in Konoha anymore.</em></p><p>In Konoha, fine was code for everything going wrong and not knowing how to say. In Konoha, a good day meant a day when she could forget that the shadows wanted her eyes. In Konoha, she distracted herself with mochi as though she could ignore that the village killed the clan.</p><p>In Suna, she wrestles a school-level understanding of how gases cool when they expand into a passable attempt at air conditioning. She brings alcohol to the hospital for a way to wash your hands without water, and she claims a small courtyard plot for a garden and tries to reinvent hydroponics. It's not great, but it's something, and she uses her garden to grow food. Kankuro can get his own poisons. She uses the paralysis gel she won off him to make a numbing salve and dilutes it with the sap from thick desert leaves as an after-sun for when she burns.</p><p>"Here," she says, handing a girl back the ball she dropped. The girl smiles, and her teeth are bad - it's such a little thing, such a stupid thing, but water is precious and when you're constantly dehydrated the lack of saliva can wreck your smile. Sasuke frowns, and glances up at Gaara in apology; he's standing carefully to the side where the girl won't see him and be afraid. (The girl isn't afraid. Some people still are, but enough, now, have seen Gaara be kind that they forget when he didn't know how to be.) "Tell me where you live," Sasuke says to the girl, and the girl takes her hand and brings her to the orphanage.</p><p>Her teeth are bad, yes, but her bones are also too brittle and the shoulders under the layers to hide from the sun are too thin. Suna is struggling. There was a reason Rasa was desperate enough to go to war, and for all Temari demands better of him and Gaara quietly points out the ways they have to change, there are not enough missions to fund the things the village needs.</p><p>"You need trade," Sasuke says. Her chin is raised, hair pushed back; Gaara stands behind her and Kankuro hovers awkwardly by the door where he's been dragged for moral support. He doesn't like his dad. He's not as forgiving as Gaara, nor as willing as Temari to work with people who hurt him if that's what it takes to do the right thing. Across the room Temari raises an eyebrow first at him, then at Sasuke, and leans forward in her chair to watch.</p><p>"Trade," Rasa repeats. "With what? We live in a desert."</p><p>"Glass," Sasuke suggests. She throws it like an accusation, almost. "Medicines. Poisons are only medicines in the wrong dose. Minerals - do you know what sort of fertiliser I could make from your desert?" In her old world, she vaguely recalls, the dust from the Sahara fertilised the Amazon rainforest. Suna lacks the rain or the forest, but she breathes in the dust every time she goes outside. "Metals, oil - don't do oil - if there's salt anywhere you can get borax, and if you give me borax I can <em>almost</em> give you bleach."</p><p>She still hasn't found the reasoning for why some things exist and others don't. The lack of bleach is still not great. She cleans bins out with chakra these days, and dares anyone to call her on the waste.</p><p>There is a pause. Rasa steeples his fingers, and says, "Those sorts of industries would take years to set up. There's only a month left on your diplomatic contract, and I cannot afford to fund a project that will not be followed through."</p><p>In Sand, Sasuke is not afraid. There is no hesitance when she says, "I have years. Fund it; I'll follow through."</p><p> </p><p>("Hell, midget," Kankuro says later. "Konoha made a mistake when they let you go."</p><p>"Konoha can suck it," she replies. "I bet I could take Karasu down with this lemon peel."</p><p>"A <em>lemon -</em> you fucker, Karasu will <em>destroy</em> your damn lemon. Gaara, make sure she doesn't cheat. A fucking - a <em>lemon</em>.")</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Sasuke in Suna: Sand cats</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Two short continuations of the Sasuke in Suna AU put together in the same chapter:</p><p>booksandbrownies requested Sasuke with a sand cat as a summons<br/>Rising_Fandoms asked if Sasuke would ever tell anyone why she'd been so afraid</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Summons?" Kankuro asks, and frowns in confusion. "I thought you were being non-combative? I mean you're obviously not because you suck, but why do you need summons?"</p><p>"<em>I</em> suck," Sasuke repeats, squinting at the two pieces of Karasu she's helping Kankuro fix for the third time that month. "You just lost against a non-combatant. Again. I'm a trade adviser, the hell are you doing with your life?"</p><p>"You might be a trade adviser <em>now</em>, but before that you were fucking black ops and you know it."</p><p>"I wasn't, actually. I disagreed with their policies. You're just really bad at blocking apple cores."</p><p>He pulls a face at her, but they both know it's for show. He's just being a baby because Sasuke finally found roses that would grow in semi-hydroponics, and her prize for beating Karasu this time was for Kankuro to spend three hours getting thorns in his fingers as he helped her get her tiny courtyard garden arranged just right. It's not quite the breakfast meeting among the camellias that she'd envisaged back in Konoha, but the roses smell nice and the shady spot in the corner is an excellent place to review budgets from.</p><p>"What would you even use summons for?" Kankuro continues, stretching out his hand to test Karasu's newly reconnected knee joint. "Messages? Spies?"</p><p>"Naps," Sasuke says. "I want one big summons to go to sleep on and one little one to go to sleep on me. It'll be great."</p><p>"<em>Naps</em>. Are you serious. You're going to walk up to a boss summon and tell them you want to sign a contract with them for <em>naps</em>."</p><p>She shakes her head. "I'm Uchiha. First I have to sneak into his kingdom in disguise and embarrass him by stealing his pawprint, <em>then</em> I can ask him for naps. Do you have any spare fingers? I think I'm missing one. Unless I used it for the thumb."</p><p>"Spare - no. What did you do to him. Karasu, my baby, did the mean girl put your hand on backwards? Come here, papa'll fix it for you."</p><p>"I swear you care more about your puppet than you do about me."</p><p>"<em>Karasu</em> doesn't keep breaking my stuff with random bits of fruit."</p><p> </p><p>"Gaara?" Kankuro calls, rounding the corner into their shared living room. "Have you seen Sasuke? She -" He stops.</p><p>"Hush," Gaara says, and he's quiet at the best of times but now he's practically inaudible. "Naps are important."</p><p><em>Gaara</em>. The insomniac. Who hasn't slept since. Ever. Who hasn't slept since ever. Why is Kankuro not surprised that Sasuke is behind this. <em>This</em> being the entire left side of the living room being colonised by a giant - is that a cat? It's legs are too long, surely, and though it <em>looks</em> like some of the spotted desert cats that roam the scrub lands on the edge of the sands it's at least twice the size. It's curled around Sasuke with one eye cracked watchfully open, and Sasuke is, to all appearances, <em>napping</em> on the damn thing. She even has a smaller cat tucked in against her chest - this one Kankuro recognises, it's a sand cat, and they're hellishly skittish around people at the best of times and prone to attacking at worst.</p><p>This one does not appear to be attacking. It appears, in fact, to be purring.</p><p>Either Sasuke went and tamed a wild sand cat then found a rogue behemoth, or she fucking summoned them. For <em>naps</em>. And conned Gaara into keeping lookout for her by persuading the poor naive sap that naps were an important part of a healthy adult's sleep routine. It's not like he'd be able to disagree with her. He doesn't <em>have</em> a sleep routine. Nor is he able to disagree with her at the best of times, but that's beside the point. Which is. Uh. There was a point. Kankuro definitely had a point.</p><p>"I am not involved," he says, pointing at the puppy pile. Kitten pile. That's not a kitten that thing could bite someone's head off without bothering to open its mouth. "You're a very beautiful summon and I'm sure you're elegant as fuck," Kankuro tells it, because the little cat might be purring and asleep but the big one is definitely awake and it never hurt to be polite, "But if anyone asks then I tried to stop her using summons as pillows and I apologise on her behalf for the lack of dignity."</p><p>The oversized predator eyes him curiously, then lowers its chin on its bigger-than-Kankuro's-torso paws. "Naps are important," it - she, that's definitely a she - rumbles, and closes her eyes. From his chair to the left, Gaara tilts his head in agreement and goes back to reviewing whichever reports he's currently reviewing.</p><p>"What."</p><p>"You're outvoted," Sasuke mumbles. "Naps win. Shoosh and let me sleep."</p><p>"<em>What.</em>"</p><p>She frowns, then lifts her head to glare blearily at him. "I bet," she starts, "that I could take Karasu down with my -"</p><p>"Don't even <em>think</em> about setting your summons on my poor puppet you monster. Have your damn nap. I'm going to find Temari and spar with someone sane."</p><p> </p><p>Sasuke does not set her summons on Karasu, because she does actually like Kankuro and he gets upset when his puppet is genuinely destroyed beyond repair. Sasuke's summons, on the other hand, are independent terrors with minds of their own, and though both are more than happy to lounge in sunbeams and go for occasional midnight wanders over the desert, they are equally happy filching whichever piece of Karasu will annoy Kankuro most and presenting it to Sasuke as a proud display of their hunting prowess. The little sand cat, particularly; he's got a fondness for Karasu's spine and retrieves it one vertebrae at a time.</p><p>Sasuke would tell him to stop except winding Kankuro up is hilarious so she doesn't. Also it's good training for them. Kankuro should be thanking her. She's being a responsible summon owner and providing her cats with enrichment and stimulation.</p><p>And naps.</p><p>She... hadn't actually been serious about the naps. She'd partly been teasing because it was funny, and partly been wishful thinking and partly... It's complicated. Uchiha were cats, and getting the boss cat's pawprint was a connection to the clan - to her brother - that she hadn't wanted to give up. She could have just got the pawprint and left it at that, you didn't have to <em>summon</em> cats to be Uchiha, but.</p><p>Sometimes Rasa watched her training and remarked that she wasn't diplomatic anymore. She'd cut ties to Konoha. She didn't wear a Suna headband instead, but she could, if she wanted to.</p><p>He meant it as an offer, she's pretty sure he meant it as an offer, but old fear made her hear a threat behind it. <em>What a shame,</em> her thoughts said. <em>Those eyes, that skill; what a waste.</em></p><p>"I'm worth more where I am," she'd replied, voice careful. It was true. A year on, and the burgeoning industries and trade contracts were bringing in far more wealth to Suna than she could ever could have pulled doing missions. Maybe someone else could do what she did - Gaara, perhaps; he was her assistant more often than not and he was as vital to negotiations as she was - but they wouldn't be the same. She was the one who made it happen, who grew it from nothing and made Suna economically stable again. She was the one who was going to keep growing it until people used their nature-defying chakra to make the world <em>better</em> instead of bloodier. She was the one, if Zabuza would let her, who was going to convince Haku to move to Suna and use his ice powers to fix the lack of ice cream problem that Suna didn't realise it was being plagued by.</p><p>Maybe not that last one. Haku probably had more important things than ice cream to use his bloodline for. Sasuke couldn't think of any that would count, but. They probably existed.</p><p>"There's no reason you can't do both, if you want," Rasa had said. "The option's there if you need it. Sometimes spars can get repetitive."</p><p>So when Sasuke had stood before the boss cat and bowed, pawprint scroll in her fist and cat ears on her head, she'd meant to leave. Summons were powerful. She didn't want to have more skills left to get rusty, even though Suna wasn't Konoha and weren't going to push her to the front line if she didn't want to go.</p><p>She's not quite sure why she didn't. Leave, that is, without a contract, without any cats to summon when she got home. Memories of Bull, maybe. Pakkun. Even Shiba, as vicious as she was.</p><p>"I don't fight," she'd said. "I'm not a hero."</p><p>"Neither am I," the serval had answered, leaning her head down and butting it against her. "We're cats. If you want a summon to help you sacrifice yourself for someone else, ask a dog."</p><p>"Ew," the little sand cat said, scrambling up to her shoulder. "Don't do that."</p><p>"So what should I summon you for?" she'd asked.</p><p>"No reason," the serval had said. "There doesn't have to be any purpose to living. We just want to be."</p><p> </p><p>For all he grumps at them, Sasuke thinks, Kankuro would make a good cat. She didn't expect to be his friend when she came to Suna. Gaara, yes, and she knew she had Rasa's wary respect - but Kankuro was a surprise. She wonders if this is how people used to feel around her, when she bit and snapped and claimed she wasn't friends with anyone then turned around and proved herself a liar multiple times in a row.</p><p>Maybe not. Kankuro's grump is a much softer kind than hers was. Still, though, he understands what it's like to grow up scared. Gaara wasn't Danzo, Rasa wasn't the Hokage, but - it's close enough. At some point, far enough down the line that they've both learned how to exist without being afraid, they talk about it. Kankuro's twitching his fingers to keep Karasu's arm just out the little sand cat's reach and the serval's watching with half an eye from the warm spot on the other side of the square, and she and Kankuro are sat on the roof and dangling their legs over the fountains that Suna could never have afforded before, and they talk.</p><p>"I used to feel guilty, you know?" she says. "I had all this knowledge, I knew all this stuff, and I just. Didn't do anything with it. Just was selfish and scared and - cowardly. I was a coward."</p><p>Kankuro hums. "I don't think it was cowardly." He says <i>it</i>, because he doesn't mean her. He means both of them. He means watching his father turn his younger brother into a monster and not stopping it, he means watching his younger brother murder people for no reason and turning to face the other way. He means living in a village that killed the clan and not warning anyone. He means knowing that someone's stealing children and turning them into weapons, and keeping quiet in case he steals you. He means being too scared to save yourself let alone anyone round you and pretending that's ok.</p><p>"I literally ran away. Who does that? What kind of hero looks at the big bad evil guy and says nope, I wonder how the weather is in Suna, then just fucks off into the sunset without looking back? Obviously I was a coward."</p><p>"What could you have done though? Genuinely, what were you expecting yourself to be able to do?"</p><p>She kicks her heels against the walls. "I don't know. Something. I could have told people, or found a way to expose him. I mean, right after the massacre I had the damn bodies - how easy would it have been to just go hey, I'm missing some eyes here, someone might want to look into that?"</p><p>"You were a <em>kid</em>. We were both kids. You going to tell me I should have done something about Gaara when I was seven?" He twitches too hard, and Karasu flies forwards in an aggressive leap that sends the sand cat yowling as he springs after. The serval lifts her head just enough to check that no one's actually being disembowelled, then flicks her tail and stubbornly goes back to ignoring them.</p><p>Sasuke takes a second to admire the complete lack of fucks her summons give. She's working her way towards emulating it. For a person, she sometimes thinks she does ok, and when she continues speaking it's more idle curiosity than any actual plan to follow through. "I'm not a kid now. I could go back."</p><p>Kankuro chokes. "Don't you <em>dare,</em>" he hisses, abandoning Karasu to his fate. Sasuke tilts her head at him curiously, half a teasing smirk playing on her lips.</p><p>"Why, you going to stop me?"</p><p>"Am I going to - fucking - <em>yes.</em> I don't want to go to Konoha. It sounds shit. The fuck would we go to Konoha for, they want to kill you. Are you serious about this. You better not be serious about this. I'll sic Gaara on you, you know I would."</p><p>She blinks. She could tell him he doesn't have to come, but he knows he doesn't, that's not the point. "I'm not serious," she promises him. Mostly. She's mostly not serious. She catches his disbelieving expression and makes a frustrated noise in response. "Bad things are happening. I could stop them. If I don't stop them, I'm not being a good person."</p><p>"Who the fuck cares?" he snaps, shoulders hunched unhappily and hands gripping too tight to the edge of the roof. "Bad things happen everywhere. You don't know that you could stop it anymore than anyone else could. Besides, you're doing good here, aren't you?"</p><p>Sasuke pauses. The little sand cat takes the opportunity to present her with a single joint of Karasu's spine, clawing his way up the side of the building to drop it next to her then curl up purring on her lap. Karasu itself has been dragged under the cover of one of the sapling trees planted round the edge of the square. It's late now, the stars are out, but in the day the kids hang off the trees with one hand and spin round and round and round until they're dizzy from it.</p><p>They didn't do that before Sasuke came to Suna. There weren't trees. Or fountains. The glass factory didn't exist, and no one hung blown glass baubles from their shop doors to gently chime in the breeze.</p><p>"Yeah," she finally says, dropping her hand on the sand cat and stroking. "I guess I am."</p><p>The serval is one of Suna's most ferocious summons. She sprawls across streets seeking warm spots and she lets people curl up on her for naps. The sand cat hunts Karasu for fun, and Sasuke is getting better, now, at putting the puppet back to together. Gaara is the strongest ninja in the village and he works most days as her assistant on trade. Kankuro is a grump and a loner and prefers puppets to people but his anger is softer than it used to be and his family know he cares.</p><p>Konoha is still shit. Many places in the world are. Suna used to be. In some ways it still is, but she's working on those. And yeah, maybe she could be doing more about Danzo, maybe there are other problems she could try to fix, but.</p><p>She's worth more where she is.</p><p>"If I'm staying," she says, flashing Kankuro a toothy grin. "Then we <em>need</em> to work on your ninja skills."</p><p>"My <em>ninja skills</em>? How old are you, four?"</p><p>"I bet," she continues, grin stretching wider as she looks around for inspiration. "I could take Karasu down with -"</p><p>Kankuro pushes her off the roof. She lands laughing, sand cat scrabbling up her chest to her shoulder, and takes off down the street with him in hot pursuit.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Sasuke the Makeup Thief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In chapter 20, Sasuke uses ink as a makeshift eyeliner and then dunks herself in the river and makes it run everywhere. Gaara has a solution for this: Kankuro's face paint is waterproof.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm not quite sure how this evolved, except that it was from a conversation with GhostSquid and that apparently I love messing with Kankuro too much to let him go. Not connected to the Sasuke in Suna AU; in this one she stays in Konoha, and for the sake of ficleting we'll pretend that everything else sorts itself out off-screen so we can just focus on the happy times.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kankuro is going mad. He must be. First the littlest pot of purple paint, then his smallest brushes, <em>now</em> the whole frigging <em>set</em> - Temari denies all knowledge. Baki raised an eyebrow at him and told him to keep better track of his stuff. Gaara - <em>hah.</em> Gaara? Steal Kankuro's <em>makeup?</em> What universe is this.</p><p>But no one else knows where he keeps them. It's a mystery. A pissing annoying mystery, but one destined to go unsolved and thank fuck he's got enough in his spare pot to last until they get back to Suna.</p><p>Destined to go unsolved, that is, until he happens to walk past Gaara and the weird Konoha kunoichi he's apparently claimed as a friend. The kunoichi - Sasuke, if Kankuro remembers correctly (he does; <em>Gaara's friend</em> is a weird enough concept that it tends to stick in the mind) - is carefully using Kankuro's detail brush to apply Kankuro's purple eyeliner on Kankuro's murderous little brother. She's also narrating what she's doing, and Gaara is keeping his head perfectly still and making the occasional <em>ah</em> of comprehension as he listens.</p><p>Mystery solved. Gaara stole the paints. Kankuro is never going to bring this up with him. He's also going to replace his paints when he gets back to Suna - Konoha have no idea how to make a decent purple, it's an embarrassing shade of maroon and he won't be having it - and pretend it never happened.</p><p>Except, the next time he meets up with Konoha - maybe he and Temari and Gaara were sent to help out with a mission - he meets Sasuke again. And she perks up when she sees him, despite the fact that he swears he's never talked to her before in his life, and she doesn't <em>say</em> anything but that night he discovers that his damn makeup is missing again.</p><p>Also someone's drawn little purple hearts under the outer corners of Gaara's eyes.</p><p>No, he's not going to comment. Nor does he comment when Sasuke is next sent to Suna, and his makeup supplies have, once again, <em>mysteriously vanished</em>. He makes a point of hiding them every time he thinks she's going to be around. He provides decoys. He <em>buys</em> her a damn pot of her own stuff, and she takes it with much showing of delight, and steals not only his four decoys but also his entire set of paints and brushes. <em>Again.</em></p><p>"I got you a gift!" he protests, showing up to the mission the next morning with a clean face (eergh he feels <em>naked</em>) because, oh look, he <em>doesn't have any fucking paint.</em></p><p>"And I appreciate your gift," Sasuke replies, "But bribery and corruption don't work on me. Do these look like enough stars to you?"</p><p>Stars. <em>Stars</em>. She's used his paint to draw constellations of little stars at the edge of Gaara's hairline. His paint. <em>Stars</em>. "Very pretty," he manages through clenched teeth, because even if he's not afraid of Gaara anymore he's also not a dick and doesn't want to hurt his little brother's feelings.</p><p>Gaara doesn't visibly preen, but Kankuro knows. He <em>knows</em>, damnit.</p><p>"How come you're not wearing your face today, anyway?" Sasuke asks, frowning in concentration as she adds the tiniest crescent moon. "You never don't wear your face."</p><p>"Gee, I <em>wonder</em>."</p><p>She pauses, then blinks at him. "But you have spares," she says. "You always have spares. I swear you have spares."</p><p>"You stole the spare! I brought you a gift, I thought I'd be good!"</p><p>"You thought you'd be <em>good</em>? But the makeup's our thing! Why wouldn't you bring spares? Who doesn't bring <em>spares</em>? What if you dropped it in the water and the fish ate it, what would you do then?" She's shuffled over to the side while she's been talking, and tugged imperiously on his sleeve until he's sat down next to her. He's not quite sure why he lets her, except that she's still talking, and it's easier not to argue. Much. "All the fish would just be swimming round in purple water and they'd need you to save them, but you'd be stuck on the land like an idiot because you didn't have any more paint so you couldn't let your face get wet in case what you were wearing washed off. The fish would <em>die</em> Kankuro. You'd be a fish killer. Do you hate my fish? Rude. Didn't bring spares, <em>honestly</em>. Who does that?"</p><p>She starts on his stripes with a practiced hand, and <em>tchs</em> at him when he tries to move his head. "Mooches off other people's makeup supplies, who does that," he counters, closing his eyes obediently when she gestures at them. "Does Konoha not have a decent makeup shop or do you just like messing with me?"</p><p>"Yours are better," she tells him stubbornly. "You know, the first time I wore makeup I used calligraphy ink? Tastes foul. Don't recommend. Also not waterproof."</p><p>"Calligraphy - oh my god your <em>eyes</em>."</p><p>"Gaara chased me into a river and it ran everywhere," she continues. "'S why he started nicking yours for me. Look up? Also your lips are a crime against humanity. Remind to bring you a chapstick because <em>ow</em>."</p><p>He rolls his eyes at that - desert, bitingly dry winds, it's a miracle his skin isn't dryer than it is - and sits back with a frown when she's done. Gaara presents him a small mirror (he doesn't want to know why Gaara has a small mirror, much like he doesn't want to know why Gaara insists on letting Sasuke doodle all over his face every time they meet) and Kankuro inspects his reflection suspiciously.</p><p>She's drawn the pattern perfectly. Of course she has.</p><p>"If I bring you a gift," he bargains, "but I hide it somewhere so you can steal it, will you leave my actual paint alone?"</p><p>"Or you could bring me two gifts, and give me one and hide the other," she offers. "Also can I have more colours? Purple suits you but red is kind of my thing."</p><p>He considers. "Two gifts, but you have to get me one in return. Not just chapstick, that's a crappy gift."</p><p>She holds her hand out to shake, and the deal is sealed. The next time they meet up he gives her a small bottle of red lip stain, and hides a gold sparkly eye shadow inside the stitching of his backpack. She squeaks when she finds it (at four in the morning, what the <em>fuck</em> Sasuke he's trying to <em>sleep</em>) and, when he finally wakes up at a reasonable hour, he finds the purple cat plushie she's replaced it with and levels her the dryest look he can muster.</p><p>"I didn't know we were doing <em>nice</em> gifts," she defends, adding gold dots to highlight the inner corners of Gaara's eyes. Does she ever actually wear the makeup he gives her, or does she just use it on Gaara? A mystery. He hopes she wears it. Gold eye shadow isn't exactly ninja-y, he put effort into matching her flower pins, damnit. "Here, give - I'll get you something else."</p><p>"You can't take a gift back," he says, holding his cat out of reach. "Were you raised by wolves? It's mine. Just get me a nice thing next time."</p><p>She huffs at him, and doesn't let herself smile, but Kankuro knows. She's smiling. He <em>knows</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Sai and his ink-beast koi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Plot twist, Sasuke's koi fish are just disguised ROOT nin.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Suggested by WorldDomain on the discord, and. I just. I couldn't <i>leave</i> it at that, could I?</p><p>Written after chapter 22, but primarily set during the month between the end of the Wave arc and the chunin exams; some text from Sasuke you may recognise as being from chapter 14.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not Sai’s place to ask why the Uchiha needs to be watched. If he did, perhaps he would wonder if the Uchiha’s loyalty was uncertain. His bloodline is important to the village and it’s a sensible precaution to try to preserve it, but. They aren’t there to guard him. Only to watch.</p><p>Outside ROOT, everyone’s loyalty is uncertain. People form attachments. It clouds their judgement. Sai’s brother is dead and can’t distract him anymore, but the Uchiha’s brother is still alive. If Sai were the sort of tool to wonder why he did things, perhaps this is the conclusion he would’ve drawn.</p><p>It doesn’t make much difference what the reason is. Uchiha duty is a mission, like any other, and if it’s a particularly boring one, that’s ok. Sai is a tool but he’s a tool that sometimes gets damaged and the time to heal is necessary. Besides, boring isn’t bad. The Uchiha has a routine and the routine rarely changes; he feeds the fish and tends the garden with simple efficiency like any good shinobi caring for their equipment, he trains his body with the same practical dedication, he eats and sleeps and studies and does household chores like any other person would.</p><p>Sai thinks. He’s never watched any other person as much as he’s watched the Uchiha.</p><p>But the routine: it’s familiar. It’s… Sai is a tool and tools are not comforted by familiar things, but there is something about the repetition and the lack of immediate danger involved that gives Sai a chance to be quiet. His mind is as much a weapon as anything else. It’s important that he be allowed to let it rest.</p><p>The month long break that the Uchiha is away for is noticeable only because he’s never been away before. Sai only knows it happened because the most efficient way to complete his last mission had been to break his arm to avoid risking a slicing blade. Broken arms don’t bleed. There can be no evidence that he was there. It’s a sensible choice. Again, he is a tool, and tools don’t look forward to the calm of the Uchiha’s garden to give themselves time to heal, so he isn’t disappointed when he learns that the Uchiha is away, but.</p><p>It’s a shame. Is all. The Uchiha’s garden is very conducive to healing, and the longer-than-usual recovery time he has to wait through results in him not being in optimal condition for his next mission. He ends up damaged again.</p><p>It’s ok. He’s ambidextrous. He draws the black and white ink-beast koi with his other hand and drops it in the Uchiha’s pond and retreats to his favourite - no, that’s not right; to a satisfactory vantage point to keep his watch, and waits for the routine to start.</p><p>It doesn’t start.</p><p>“Maybe you should,” the Uchiha says, kneeling in front of the fish pond with too many emotions on his face. What the fish should is not clear. He throws them pellets, but it lacks his usual efficiency. There is nothing calm in the way he flings the food at them, and Sai cannot see the purpose in it. “You don’t do anything. You just sit here all day in this stupid pond trusting me to keep you alive, how the fuck are you meant to cope if you won’t look after yourself?”</p><p>It’s a valid concern. Though, Sai had assumed the fish were there for a reason, and that the Uchiha cared for them like a shinobi caring for their kunai to keep them sharp. In which case it isn’t a valid concern. If the fish are necessary, then it is necessary to tend to them. Kunai don’t sharpen themselves. It’s foolish to be angry at them for it.</p><p>Nor do they talk back, and in this the fish follow expectations; what the Uchiha expects to get out of his one sided conversation with them is a mystery, but one that Sai dutifully listens to. The intel that the Uchiha likes honeysuckles is irrelevant, the wastage of chakra on making ripples in the pond is baffling, the importance that seems to be placed on the realisation that the garden does, in fact, belong to the Uchiha - most of what is said is lost on Sai.</p><p>He hesitates with his report, unsure how to bring it into a concisely coherent summary. The Uchiha was neither concise nor coherent, and Sai is not sure what is of interest to pass on to Danzo-sama and what isn’t. It’s confusing.</p><p>It keeps being confusing. The familiar patterns have gone. The Uchiha changes things in the garden. He doesn’t feed the fish as a perfunctory chore anymore, he talks to them. He practices his water manipulation, except surely he isn’t deriving any benefit from what he’s doing, and from the running commentary he keeps up it sounds almost like he’s playing with them. He tells them about his day. He starts conversations half way through as though he expects them to know what he’s talking about, and he huddles against the edge of the pond and asks them questions with an aching honesty that begs an answer, and when he talks his own way round to a conclusion that he seems if not happy with then settled on, he thanks the fish for listening.</p><p>As though listening helps.</p><p>“I’m glad you’re here,” he says once, trailing his fingers in the water. The black and white ink-beast koi swims in a hesitant curve, just far enough in the shade of the lotus plants that it can’t be identified as the imposter it is. In the hiding place that Sai would say was his favourite if he knew how to put words to the concept, the words lodge in his thoughts and stay.</p><p>He doesn’t pass them on. Reports are meant to be concise and coherent. The Uchiha is confusing. Sai… wants. Or doesn’t want. He isn’t sure. He doesn’t want someone else to be put on Uchiha duty. He wants to stay where someone is glad he’s there. He doesn’t want to deal with the circling emotions the Uchiha leaves him with because Sai killed his brother and killed his emotions and the Uchiha’s garden is meant to be where he goes to be quiet, but. He doesn’t want the Uchiha to stop.</p><p>“You,” the Uchiha says, pointing aggressively at the ink-beast koi. “I see you, fucker. You aren’t eating. Get out here and stop hiding all the damn time.” Crouched, alert and on guard in a way that makes him sick with unfamiliar dread, Sai doesn’t move. The ink-beast retreats further under the lotus plants. “Eat,” the Uchiha insists, using his chakra to reach over with a small handful of pellets and push them through the leaves.</p><p>Sai doesn’t. The ink-beast doesn’t. Whether he wants or doesn’t want, being caught will be a mission failure. Being caught will mean being taken off Uchiha duty. If he’s caught, he won’t come back to the place where he can be quiet and someone is glad he’s there.</p><p>He doesn’t stop holding his breath until long after the Uchiha gives up and leaves.</p><p>“White spots,” the Uchiha says the next day. “How the fuck do I tell if you have white spots on you, you’re a black and white fish. You’ve got giant white spots.” He squints. “You don’t <em>act</em> like you’re itchy,” he says dubiously. “Are your scales puffed up? I can’t see from here. They look weird but they’ve always looked like that, and you must’ve been eating at some point or you wouldn’t be alive. So.” He chews his lip in thought. “I can get medicine? If you want. I don’t think it would work though if you’re not actually sick.”</p><p>The ink-beast flicks its fins as it changes direction to stay just out of reach of being visible. It’s not in any way a response, but the Uchiha nods as though it is. “Ok,” he says. “I’ll try something else.”</p><p>The next day, he takes the filter out the pond and scrubs it, meticulously taking it apart and scrunching up his nose at the gunk and putting it back together again when it’s clean. He tests the water temperature, and narrates the whole process of keeping a good balance of bacteria to ensure he doesn’t disrupt the nitrogen cycle, and Sai settles into a more comfortable crouch and learns.</p><p>There is no situation he can think of where he would need to understand how ammonia breaks down into nitrites and then nitrates, but. The Uchiha talks. He likes it when people listen. Sai listens.</p><p>“Appreciate this,” he says a few days later, when the ink-beast still hasn’t eaten anything. “This is disgusting. You’re lucky I love you because <em>ergh.</em>” He holds a small tub out over the water, face screwed up in what Sai can now recognise as a scowling pout, and upends a collection of tiny shrimp, worms, and frozen daphne flies into the pond. The other koi swarm, but the Uchiha is looking only at the ink-beast, and he frowns unhappily when it dithers in the shade of the plants and doesn’t come out to eat.</p><p>Sai wishes he were better at drawing. If he were not so worried about his koi being spotted as a fake, he thinks, he could at least send it out to pretend. He still hasn’t worked out how to understand when he wants things, but it would make him feel better if he could stop the Uchiha worrying.</p><p>Feeling better. It’s… an odd sensation. <em>Better</em> is not <em>mission ready</em>. There is no objective reason why better is preferable, except that the Uchiha is distracting when he worries. He’s distracting other times as well. He sat cross legged by his plants and painstakingly wove a genjutsu over his eyes to keep them dark, but he was still learning and when it faltered Sai could see the sharingan underneath.</p><p>The Uchiha scowled and flicked his eyes back to black and started the genjutsu again. “Idiot,” he called himself. “Hide them or lose them, get it <em>right</em>.”</p><p>“He is growing closer to his teammates,” Sai reports. “Uzumaki spends most nights now staying at his house. He is advanced enough in his genjutsu studies to create his own techniques, though it takes him a while to master them.”</p><p>He does not report the sharingan. He does not want the Uchiha to lose his eyes.</p><p>“If I tell you a secret,” the Uchiha says another night, “will you come out and eat something?” Sai doesn’t reply, but he never does. “Ok,” the Uchiha says anyway. “Don’t tell anyone though. It’s a secret, remember.” He takes a breath, his head tipped forward until his hair hangs long and loose in his eyes, and his hand resting just on the surface of the water. “I’m a girl,” he - she - says. “I’ve always been a girl. I’ve just been pretending to be a guy because sometimes it’s easier for people to see what they expect, but. What people see isn’t always the truth, and the truth is that I’m a girl.”</p><p>She pauses. The ink-beast swims in a tight circle, wanting to leave the cover of the plants to come out, wanting to try to eat something for her even though it can’t, and hidden in the garden, Sai wants too.</p><p>“Well,” Sasuke finally says. “Now you know. I hope you’re ok.”</p><p>Don’t tell anyone, she said, and Sai doesn’t. What people see isn’t always the truth, she said, and Sai keeps his face blank and emotionless as he bows to Danzo-sama and gives his report, and the truth is that outside ROOT, everyone’s loyalty is uncertain. People form attachments.</p><p>Sai is a tool, but the truth is that Sai is people too. Sasuke is a difficult person to learn what that means from, but she loves her fish, and she doesn’t hide the emotions that crowd too many and too loud onto her face, and she doesn’t smile a lot but when she does it’s honest in a way that Sai wants to learn one day to copy.</p><p>There is no purpose to it. It won’t help him in social situations, or ingratiate him to people he works with. Sasuke doesn’t smile for a reason, she smiles because she’s happy. She smiles for her.</p><p>The koi is the most advanced ink-beast Sai has ever made. He works on it, tweaking it, adding layers and depth and smoothing out the scales and getting the texture just right. She has a sharingan, and though she’s never turned it on the fish before, if he’s going to send his koi out to eat he has to make sure he won’t get caught.</p><p>If he gets caught, he gets taken off Uchiha duty. He’ll miss the garden. He’ll miss Sasuke.</p><p>But if he gets caught, someone will replace him, who will think of her as the Uchiha instead of Sasuke, as he instead of her, who will not hesitate to report her sharingan or the way she confides that she still loves her brother or the fact that she’d rather keep her eyes for herself and doesn’t trust the village to keep her safe.</p><p>Sai doesn’t know, yet, what he’ll do when she betrays the village. It’s confusing. He was made to be ROOT, he was made to be loyal, but he’s formed an attachment and it’s clouding his judgement. But he knows what he wants: he wants to make her smile, and he does that by listening, by keeping her secrets, and by finding a way to allow the ink-beast to eat so she doesn’t have to worry about it.</p><p>So he does.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Sasuke in ROOT: Kakashi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Firefly_Aki requested a continuation where the rest of Team Seven found about about Sasuke still being alive, to which s. added "Imagine Kakashi insisting on being involved in many missions that could go wrong just to get a glimpse of a Ghost."</p>
<p>Follows on from Chapter one: Sasuke in ROOT, again spoilers up to the end of the Wave arc</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It takes sixteen years for Kakashi to see Sasuke again. Over half Sasuke’s lifetime. For twelve of those years, Kakashi thought he was dead. For three of those years, Naruto was the only person he showed himself to, and the only one to see firsthand what Danzo did to him. Naruto became Hokage and Sasuke stepped out the shadows long enough to say that he still existed, and Naruto came to Sakura and Kakashi white-faced and grief-stricken and said, “He forgot his name. Danzo called him Itachi.”</p>
<p>He said, “He calls himself a ghost.”</p>
<p>He said, “He told me I’d never see him again.”</p>
<p>Fragmented, shaking, pulled together with a quiet resolve, falling apart with desperate realisation; Naruto said a lot of things.</p>
<p>He turned to Kakashi and said, “He wants you to take better care of yourself. You’re not allowed to give up.”</p>
<p>For three years, Kakashi did. He’s been living for other people for most of his life. There’s a bitterness to it, a hopeless resentment that bleeds into shame, a duty that he wears like thorns because he was the one who made the call that left Sasuke vulnerable and it’s his fault that Danzo turned him into a ghost.</p>
<p>“Um,” Sasuke said, wide-eyed and guilty and more worried about being told off than about the missing nin at his back. “Um, Haku saved my life. I didn’t want him to die.”</p>
<p>Haku saved my life. Where was Kakashi when Haku saved Sasuke’s life? Failing to protect his genin. Where was Kakashi when Sasuke latched on to an enemy as a source of affection, where was Kakashi when behind the anger and the defensiveness was a lonely kid who still believed the world could be good? Haku saved my life. I didn’t want him to die.</p>
<p>Where was Kakashi when Sasuke learnt the world didn’t work like that? He was by the memorial stone, blaming himself for driving his genin to suicide. He was at home, coming to grips with the fact that he had two students left and he was going to do right by them. He was with his dogs, slowly trying to build a better person and sagging in exhausted frustration at how hard it was to maintain.</p>
<p>He was giving up, because Naruto was Hokage now, and Sakura was one of the strongest jounin in the village now, and he thought he did his job and he could rest, and all the while he was failing to protect Sasuke and Haku wasn’t even there to save his life and <em>where the fuck was Kakashi -</em></p>
<p>For three years, Kakashi hates himself enough for what he did that he pulls himself through life and, in penance, for Sasuke, doesn’t allow himself to give up. He pulls the better person he built over himself like a mask and he wears it until it cracks at the edges and he holds the pieces in hopeless despair and knows he can’t maintain it but doesn’t know what else to do, and in the third year Sakura is wounded on a mission and a man with no face who glows blue in a bubble of chakra drags her to safety and tells her she’s not allowed to die.</p>
<p>Why is she only required to live, Kakashi wants to ask, when Kakashi has to not give up. He does not ask. Sasuke is not there to ask.</p>
<p>For the last of the sixteen years that it’s been since Kakashi saw Sasuke, he takes back to back suicide missions and waits for them to go wrong. He does it as himself for a month, then Naruto stops him. He does it as ANBU for three months, then Naruto stops him. He does it freelance for another month and Naruto forces an ultimatum on him, then he goes missing nin and does it through a web of connections and spies that let him piece together the missions Konoha won’t give him anymore. He settles into ANBU Hound like a formless spirit given a suit of armour to haunt, he staggers into it until the iron feels like him and the hollow inside stops rattling, he hides in it like he is the suit of armour and the person inside is already dead -</p>
<p>“You aren’t a ghost,” Sasuke says, but his voice is flat and wrong. “Stop acting like one.”</p>
<p>“Is there an application form?” Kakashi asks mildly, keeping his breathing shallow in an effort not to bleed out. “I’m already helping from the shadows. Isn’t that what you ghosts do?”</p>
<p>“You aren’t a ghost,” Sasuke repeats, forcing chakra over the gaping hole in Kakashi’s abdomen until it burns from it. Absently, light-headed, Kakashi recognises the style. There is no finesse to the healing. Field medicine keeps you together until a medic can fix you, but this is the brutal rejection of death that comes when you’ve only yourself to rely on and you’ve never been taught what to do.</p>
<p>Where was Kakashi, he thinks, when Sasuke learnt that he had to heal himself because there was no one left to help.</p>
<p>There is so much more that he means to say, but Sasuke forces him to survive with an efficiency that leaves him breathless from pain, and by the time Kakashi has his words back he’s gone.</p>
<p>If it was meant to be a deterrent, it was a poor one.</p>
<p>“Go home,” Sasuke says the next time. This time his chakra is cold, shards of ice dragging up the side of Kakashi’s face where some bright spark had thought they were original in targeting Sharingan no Kakashi’s sharingan. “You’re Konoha, you’re not meant to be out here alone.”</p>
<p>“Konoha failed you,” Kakashi points out, wincing at the way talking pulls on the fresh burn. It’s something he’s wondered, but never dared know the answer to - but Danzo’s arm. Itachi, and the way he’d seemed broken, the one time Kakashi met him before he died. The stream of reports and information about Akatsuki that only made sense if they had a spy and stopped when Itachi’s illness stopped him, the way, when you think about it, the village’s reaction to the massacre rang false.</p>
<p>How fast Danzo moved when Sasuke came back from Wave.</p>
<p>“I failed you,” he adds, damning in the weariness he says it with.</p>
<p>“So?” Sasuke asks. His mask is off, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. The muscles in his face have forgotten how to move, and for all the words echo the angry defiance Sasuke used to wield against the world, the tone he speaks them in is wrong. He is as hollow as Kakashi is. “You’re not meant to be alone,” Sasuke repeats, and sits back on his heels to inspect his work. He gives no sign that he’s satisfied but the bubble flicks back over him, the one Kakashi taught him to help him breathe when he felt like he was drowning, and with a faint whisper of kawarimi he’s gone.</p>
<p>The third time, Kakashi grins, blood on his teeth and savage with it. “I’m not though, am I,” he says, and it’s been weeks but it’s not like he’s had anyone else to talk to to interrupt the conversation. “Keep showing up like this and I’ll think you care.”</p>
<p>“Of course I care,” Sasuke says, as flat and empty and wrong as he’s ever said anything else. He lowers his hand from Kakashi’s shoulder, chakra fizzing out as he does so. “What did they poison you with? I can’t heal it.”</p>
<p>And Kakashi… falters.</p>
<p>He has spent sixteen years - more than sixteen, now - clawing his way through grief. Twelve before that failing to cope with the loss of Minato, with the guilt that came from abandoning Naruto. Four before that seeing Rin every time he used chidori, Obito every time he opened his sharingan eye. Five before that with his father hiding in whispers and begging the empty house to shut up, and before that his mother, and his whole life laid out and weighing on him until grief and guilt and loss drove him mad and the only way out was to drag himself forward and resent every step that the people he failed made him take -</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he means.</p>
<p>Sasuke nods, and lowers his head to suck the poison out.</p>
<p>“Wait,” Kakashi says, lifting a hand to stop him. “If we don’t know what it is it might hurt you.”</p>
<p>“If I leave it where it is you might die,” Sasuke returns. He pushes Kakashi’s hand aside and keeps going.</p>
<p>Um, he’d said, small and naive and still believing the world could be good. Um, Haku saved my life. I didn’t want him to die.</p>
<p>Of course I care, he said, twenty eight and a ghost and trying to keep Kakashi alive.</p>
<p>“But I failed you,” Kakashi protests. “I didn’t save your life. You needed me to protect you and I didn’t, and I believed you’d committed suicide when you hadn’t, and you told me not to give up and I did.”</p>
<p>Sasuke turns his head and spits out a mouthful of blood, and the face he pulls at the taste is the first expression Kakashi’s seen him make since he was twelve years old and scared. He scowls in exactly the same way, made harsher by the adult shape to his features, but the wrinkle to his nose, the way he half sticks his tongue out as he shudders in disgust, it’s familiar.</p>
<p>“So?” he says, like he did before, but this time if Kakashi kids himself he can almost hear the emotion behind it. “If it matters, do better. If it doesn’t matter, ignore it. Stop going on suicide missions. You can’t do either if you’re dead.”</p>
<p>It’s not that easy. Of course it’s not. The fact that Sasuke thinks it is - if he even <em>does</em> - doesn’t change reality. Twenty eight and a ghost and trying to keep Kakashi alive, and he’s still naive enough to believe people can do better if they try, to believe <em>Kakashi</em> can do better. Still believes the world can be good. He’s even still short, Kakashi thinks, with a somewhat hysterical surge of humour.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s that that makes him say it, or maybe it’s the unreal cast to the whole situation, but he leans his head back against the broken wall and huffs out a beat of laughter. “It’s the only time I get to see you though,” he says. “What’s my incentive to do better if it stops you showing up?”</p>
<p>Sasuke removes another mouthful of poison and spits it out with another grimace. “<em>That’s</em> why you’re doing this? You’re an idiot<em>.</em>”</p>
<p>“I am, aren’t I,” he says, grinning, blood on his teeth and he isn’t savage with it, he doesn’t know what he is, but he’s been living with guilt for so long that the sudden and confusing lack of it is addictive. </p>
<p>All the ghosts that haunted him, Minato and Rin and Obito - god, <em>Obito </em>- they were dead now, weren’t they? He’d thought Obito was dead for years and he wasn’t, and when Obito came back it was too painful and too short and Obito died again so what was the point, but Sasuke isn’t dead and he isn’t gone and he promised, didn’t he, that he’d do right by his students even if he thought he only had two left to do right by and <em>Sasuke isn’t dead.</em></p>
<p>“Maa, so cold to your poor sensei,” he teases. “Taking advantage of his weakened state to insult him when he can’t fight back, what a thing to do.”</p>
<p>Sasuke sits back, a confused wariness in his eyes but blankness pulling back over his expression, and Kakashi’s lightness falls. Sixteen years have taken their toll. More than half Sasuke’s life, and he was lonely and just beginning to learn to connect to people before it all went wrong. It won’t be easy for him - for either of them - to remember how to be alive again, but Kakashi did it once before. He can be more than ANBU Hound. Sasuke can be more than a ghost. He wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t care, if he didn’t want to be, surely.</p>
<p>He drops a hand on Sasuke’s head, fingers catching in the tangles in his hair. “Ah, don’t worry, Sasuke,” he says. “It’ll take more than a few insults to take old sensei down.”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t worried,” Sasuke denies, but he hesitates for a moment before shaking the hand off. He brings his chakra back to Kakashi’s shoulder, and this time it’s cool, still efficient but not so harsh as it threads through the wound looking for traces of the poison. “You'll live,” he pronounces, and his chakra flicks blue over him as he prepares to leave.</p>
<p>“Wait,” Kakashi says, lifting a hand again. The feel of Sasuke’s bubble is smooth and cool beneath his fingers. He half expects Sasuke not to listen; a grimace and an insult don’t make up for sixteen years and all the ways he failed before them.</p>
<p>Sasuke waits.</p>
<p>“Will you come back?” he asks. It’s blunt, and honest, and reveals too much about himself for ANBU Hound to ever allow, but he learnt to put his mask aside once. It’s not easy.  It can be done.</p>
<p>“No,” Sasuke replies, blunt and honest in return. It doesn’t soften the blow. “Next time you kill yourself you’ll die.”</p>
<p><em>That’s not what I’m doing,</em> Kakashi wants to deny, but the bubble disappears beneath his fingers and his hands close on nothing. Sasuke’s gone.</p>
<p>Um, Haku saved my life. I didn’t want him to die.</p>
<p>Of course I care.</p>
<p>That’s why you’re doing this? You’re an idiot.</p>
<p>Next time you kill yourself you’ll die.</p>
<p>“Touché,” Kakashi mumbles, levering himself into a more upright sitting position with a wince. It’s brutal in its practicality, but if seeing Sasuke is the only reason Kakashi goes on his suicide missions then Sasuke’s refusal to play along should be enough to make him stop.</p>
<p>If.</p>
<p>He gets as far as bending his legs up towards himself, heels tucked under and one hand braced against the ground to push himself wearily up, and stops. He rests his chin on his knees. The side of his face is permanently scarred from the burns that Sasuke healed just enough to keep him alive. Sasuke never learnt to use finesse. He aches. He’s a missing nin. He let himself get poisoned by a stab wound to the shoulder that, sixteen years ago, he wouldn’t even have blinked at, and he doesn’t even know if he did it on purpose.</p>
<p>He’s lost a lot of weight in the months since he left Konoha.</p>
<p>“Touché,” he mumbles again, blinking slowly (painfully, on one side) and ANBU Hound hovers over him like a suit of armour, an iron shell, a mask. Kakashi has failed a lot of people. ANBU Hound has only ever failed Kakashi.</p>
<p>He bites his thumb and smears the blood on the ground.</p>
<p>“You have a scroll for a reason,” Pakkun says, frowning at the state of him.</p>
<p>“I left it behind,” Kakashi replies. “Can you call Bull for me? I don’t think I can walk.”</p>
<p>“You don’t think you - <em>Pup</em> did you even think at all?” Pakkun advances, not fast but too fast for Kakashi to stop him, and stands on his hind legs to sniff at the shoulder wound. It is, Kakashi notices, still bleeding. He hadn’t realised. “This is still poisoned,” Pakkun says. “Why didn’t you treat it?”</p>
<p>“It’s been treated. It’s not fatal anymore.” At Pakkun’s disbelieving stare, he defends, “Someone sucked most of the poison out for me, it’s good.”</p>
<p>“<em>It’s not,</em>” Uhei yips, trotting towards him. Shiba is hot on his heels, growling warily at the deserted surroundings, and Bisuke scrambles around to tuck himself against Kakashi’s other side.</p>
<p>“Where is your human-pack,” Akino asks, the only other dog to speak in words, low and commanding and worried. “Why did they leave you like this.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” Kakashi manages, hesitating.</p>
<p>“<em>No pack,</em>” Guruko barks, then Urushi, “<em>No pack,</em>” and Uhei, Bisuke, even Shiba - all them distressed that he’s out here alone, Pakkun’s digging through his things and is growling at the lack of first aid kit, Akino’s nose is to the ground over where Sasuke had spat out the contaminated blood -</p>
<p>“<em>Pack,</em>” Bull says. He flumphs down on the ground in a way that makes Kakashi lose his balance and end up leaning back against him. There is nothing reproachful in the way he curls forward and drops his giant head on Kakashi’s knee, nor in the way his tail thumps, once, comfortingly, against the ground.</p>
<p>Kakashi rests a hand between his ears. “Sorry,” he says. “I should’ve called you earlier.” They don’t ask why he didn’t - they’re dogs, excuses don’t matter - but he tells them anyway. “I had a puppy. Sasuke. You met him once. I was trying to find him.”</p>
<p>“Pup,” Pakkun says, sneezing in disbelief. “We’re <em>trackers.</em>”</p>
<p>And - they’re dogs. There is no way to explain to a dog how it works, how it makes sense to court death because the only choices are that you succeed or that you stop hurting, how someone can be a man and a shell and the hollow ghost that inhabits it all at once.</p>
<p>“He’s hard to track,” is what he says instead. “I accidentally taught him a way to avoid leaving a scent trail.” His smile is wry, at that, wry and lopsided. He didn’t teach Sasuke much. The fact that he still uses the bubble jutsu, that he’s perfected it to a level that seems almost subconscious in its familiarity - it could mean something. Even if it just means the jutsu was useful, it could mean something.</p>
<p>The smile falls. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I won’t see him again.”</p>
<p>Sasuke is older, now, than Kakashi was when he was his sensei. It’s not Kakashi’s place to try and save him if he doesn’t want to be saved.</p>
<p>“What matters is getting somewhere you can heal,” Pakkun says firmly, standing on his hind legs again and leaning his front paws against Kakashi’s chest for emphasis. “Bull will carry you. If you need some of us to go home so there’s less strain on your chakra, say. If you hold out and faint I will chew every left shoe you own.”</p>
<p>Kakashi nods. “Ok,” he says, too tired to argue. “Ok.” Between them, Shiba and Urushi help him onto Bull's back, and Bull stands up with a slow sort of caution to avoid tipping him off. The dogs aren't Sasuke. They don't tell him he's not allowed to give up, and there is no blame in the way they swarm around him and press close. Kakashi's not even sure, anymore, that there's any blame in the way Sasuke circled him warily and kept a close enough watch on him to know when to keep him alive. It's an odd thing to consider, but.</p>
<p>Ok.</p>
<p>(Later, when Kakashi is slumped over Bull and made drowsy with the feel of his pack around him, when Shiba prowls in strafing arcs to find any enemies and Bisuke curls up against Kakashi’s side and frets, Akino hangs back.</p>
<p>“You spat the poison,” he says, low, measured.</p>
<p>“He’s not allowed to give up,” the ninja replies.</p>
<p>They walk for a moment, assessing each other, trailing after the others. “We’re dogs,” Akino says finally. “We can’t stop him.”</p>
<p>“I’m a ghost,” Sasuke returns, and Akino snorts in a way that makes Uhei glance back with his head tilted in question.</p>
<p>“You smell like a person,” Akino corrects. “You smell like a cat.”</p>
<p>Sasuke hums, keeping pace for another few steps. “Uchiha,” he says, musingly, rolling the word over like he’s forgotten how to pronounce it. “Uchiha are cats. I didn’t realise you could still sense it.”</p>
<p>Akino doesn’t answer. There is nothing to say; it would be redundant to reiterate that he did, and he isn’t interested in explaining how his senses work.</p>
<p>Whether he explains them or not, he feels the flicker of the bubble enclosing Sasuke again, and the absence of him when he’s gone. Uhei watches, and Shiba curls her lips over her teeth and shakes herself, and Kakashi obliges Pakkun with a head scratch that Pakkun insists on more for Kakashi’s benefit than his own, and Bull walks steadily forward with half the pack riding on his back.</p>
<p>They carry on.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sasuke: Next time you try to kill yourself with a suicide mission I'll let you die<br/>Also Sasuke: bitch i've been lying since i was seven years old you thought Danzo made me <i>honest</i></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Sasuke in ROOT: Itachi</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hallowtide and Ardishana requested an Itachi POV, and stabmesenpai wanted Sasuke to secretly be living her best life. Combining the two, here are either the intervening years between Sasuke being taken by Danzo and Sasuke reappearing to Naruto as a ghost in chapter one, or alternatively an AU of an AU of an AU. Entirely up to you.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Suicide, Sasuke went for. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if it worked for Danzo, then it would work for him. And you know? It’s not like anyone was going to miss him. He’d been with Team Seven for what, two months? The plan had always been to leave, and they thought he was dead anyway, so. Sucks to be them.</p><p>The plan had always been to leave. That was the good part of the plan. Turns out though that the whole waiting for Itachi part, nah. That was shit.</p><p>There is a very careful balance to be maintained in letting someone think they broke you. When Sasuke was first brought into ROOT he was terrified. He was living the nightmare timeline. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong, starting with the pathetic mess that was Wave - hell, starting with the glaring lack of fire jutsu and all the ways he didn’t measure up to canon Sasuke, but Wave was an easier place to hang the blame.</p><p><em>Fired.</em> He still can’t believe that Kakashi fired him. What the fuck, Hatake. Fine, he didn’t want to be a ninja, he wasn’t cut out for the killing people and the letting people die but still. What the fuck. Rude. Also set Sasuke up for the worst year of either of his lives and a shit-ton more trauma to work through afterwards because it wasn’t like he had <em>enough</em> of that to be going on with, but that was a much heavier way of looking at the world that Sasuke refused to indulge in, so. Rude. It was rude.</p><p>But! Tiny puny scared Sasuke was tiny, puny, and scared. Anger was met with violence, inability to follow orders was met with punishment, any attempt to rebel was met with starvation and withholding bathroom privileges. You didn’t know it was a privilege to not have to shit in the corner of your room, did you. Now you do. You also didn’t know how fucking amazing it felt to finally be judged obedient and be allowed to shower, or how far you’d go for the overwhelming luxury of a decent meal and not being hungry for a night, but. Now you do.</p><p>Now Sasuke does. Bodies are demanding things. They’re also stupid. You think they’d learn, you think they’d adapt and start coping and getting on with life, but they don’t. They keep hurting. They keep demanding food, however many times you tell them you fucked that up for the next week at least and they can’t have any. His hair got so matted and made him feel so sick that he forced his chakra to fire and burnt it off, and then he got the bright idea that fire cleansed, didn’t it, so he set fire to his clothes to his room to everything because he had this mad notion that if he could just get <em>clean -</em></p><p>There is a very careful balance to be made in letting them think they broke you, and when Danzo came to save him from isolation and brought him a glass of water and half an apple, neatly sliced, Sasuke knelt at his feet and genuinely believed the man was god. If all it took to be fed and washed and healed after the brutal training sessions that he’d thought were a punishment but that still didn’t stop was to beg for it, then Sasuke would beg. Down on his knees and grateful for it, refusing to remember why he shouldn’t, it wasn't worth what it cost to disobey.</p><p>“Danzo-sama,” he said, reverent, loving, terrified of disappointing, sharingan red and waiting to be used in service of the true leader of the village.</p><p>“Itachi,” Danzo returned. The apple slices became harder to earn. The punishments did not. The name stuck.</p><p>And, fucker, you made a mistake. You chose Itachi to hurt, you chose it to remind Sasuke of his place; you are not worth killing, Itachi said, you are not <em>worthy </em>and Sasuke-called-Itachi strips himself back and remakes himself in a way he thinks Danzo will be pleased with because he’s so fucking <em>desperate</em> for Danzo to be pleased with him, and all the while Danzo thinks that <em>Itachi was a name that would hurt him.</em></p><p>“My brother loves me,” Sasuke spits, Sasuke-called-Itachi snarls, hacks and coughs and chokes it up from the core that Danzo couldn’t touch, hoards it close in silence and secrecy and the freedom of finally walking away. “You think you’re the only person who cares about me but you’re wrong, you think you’re the most important person in my life but you’re fucking <em>wrong</em>, my brother <em>loves</em> me and you can’t have that because he’s the strongest ninja I know and he’d set you on fire for what you did and my <em>brother loves me -</em>”</p><p>Suicide, he went for. Hey, it worked before. It’s harder to walk away from Danzo than it was to leave Team Seven, and if he didn’t have his brother to walk towards, he doesn’t think he could have done it. Balance has never been his style; the only way to make them think they broke him was to break, and the temptation to crawl back and cry and beg forgiveness for his sins is a festering wound that he doesn’t think will ever heal.</p><p>“Shark-man,” he says, leaning against the smooth stone wall for support. “Shark-man in a red and black cloak. I know you. Can you get my brother? I bleed. Am bleeding. He’s got more hair than me and he pokes people in the forehead to say hello.”</p><p>“What the fuck,” Kisame manages, and Sasuke passes out. The journey from Fire to Rain isn’t that long, but it’s marked with a lot of pain, and too many hours spent convinced he was going to be found. Too many hours spent convincing himself he didn't want to be found.</p><p>He’s still woozy when he wakes up. His brother isn’t there, but he’s bandaged, and healed, he thinks. It’s been a while since he's earnt healing. He suppresses the wooziness as best he can and answers any questions with a rote blankness that’s carefully crafted not to offend, and accidentally manages to offend in a way that leaves him frozen still and braced for pain.</p><p>“<em>Itachi?</em>” Kisame repeats. “They named you after the guy that killed your entire family? The hell, kid?”</p><p>I know you, Sasuke had said, but he doesn’t know this man and he doesn’t know what to say to appease him. He watches, warily, eyes spinning red, trying to learn what he can trying to read the answers he needs in the lines of disbelief and disgust on the other man’s face -</p><p>“Kisame,” Itachi says from the doorway, and Sasuke’s world resets. His brother is here. Itachi loves him. That’s not to say Itachi won’t hurt him, because last time Sasuke saw him Itachi stabbed him in the chest and drowned him in his own blood multiple times in a row, but it’s ok. He’s used to being hurt. It’s fine.</p><p>“Aniki,” he blurts, too relieved to be cautious. “Danzo-sama wants my eyes. I’d give them to him, but they aren’t ready yet, and you’re the only person I can get a mangekyou from but I don’t want to kill you, so I kind of think Danzo-sama needs to die but I love him and I don't actually mean that and I need you to keep me safe.”</p><p>It’s… a lot. ROOT has been perfecting its conditioning for years. Danzo is good at what he does. Knowing that doesn’t change how effective it is, and if Sasuke hadn’t broken he’d’ve died, and his brother can’t save him if he’s dead.</p><p>Hell, his brother is barely less traumatised than Sasuke is, how in the fuck is he meant to save him <em>now</em> -</p><p>“Tobi likes waffles,” Obito insists, and Sasuke makes an inarticulate sound of rage.</p><p>“In what fucking universe do <em>waffles</em> come with <em>pickles and fish</em> - Kisame! Kisame, he’s being wrong again!”</p><p>“Tobi’s waffles!”</p><p>“Tobi’s waffles are a disgrace to humanity, someone pass me - <em>thank</em> you. <em>Now</em> Tobi can have his waffles, look at all this syrupy sugary goodness on them, they’re delightful.”</p><p>“But Tobi doesn’t want sugary goodness,” Obito grouses, while in the background Kisame rolls his eyes.</p><p>“Let him eat his damn breakfast in peace, brat. Who cares about food.”</p><p>“I fucking care, that’s who -”</p><p>“Otouto,” Itachi says mildly, and Sasuke stops. It’s not with quite the same terror he used to obey Danzo, because Itachi’s love is not conditional in the way that Danzo’s was, but the effect is the same and Itachi carefully doesn’t wince at the immediate reaction. He’s already made that mistake. Once was enough.</p><p>It’s terrifying, in its own way, to wield that kind of power over someone, and Itachi is ashamed to admit that if it would not hurt his brother to avoid him, then he would. Brittle, scarred, hair burnt bald and only just growing back in a miasma of black fuzz, foul-mouthed and angry and deadly and hurting; Sasuke is not the brother he expected to grow out of the seeds he planted at the massacre.</p><p>Sasuke is the brother he’s got. He likes ice cream. He sits watching the rain, shivering from the cold but not seeming to acknowledge it, and if Itachi doesn’t fetch him in he forgets he’s allowed to eat. He raids Itachi’s wardrobe despite having an entire closet of his own clothes that Itachi bought him, and he wraps himself in Itachi’s oversized Akatsuki cloak and sleeps in a corner on the floor.</p><p>His hair grows. The fuzz turns to fluff turns to wayward bangs and messy tousle. He gets a pet fish from somewhere - it’s shaped suspiciously like a miniature shark, and Kisame acts overly innocent when Itachi asks - and he builds it a pond, bringing it interestingly shaped rocks and arranging them by hand as he apologises for the lack of plants.</p><p>“No soil,” he says, when he thinks Itachi isn’t listening. “No soil, no sunlight, what am I meant to do with that, huh? Build you a rock garden, that’s what. Don’t look at me like that, I’m doing the best I can with what I have. <em>I</em> haven’t seen plants for months, you don’t see me complaining, do you? Ow. You’re a very bitey fish, you know. You’re lucky I love you.”</p><p>Sasuke has learned to love with submission and fearful reverence, but beneath that, behind that, he loves with an aggressively attentive care and a simple joy that Itachi doesn’t understand. It is not love that leads to vengeance like Itachi asked him to live by, nor love that leads to sacrifice like Itachi lives his own life by in turn. Sasuke loves Itachi, and Danzo, and ice cream and rain and stealing clothes and stacking rocks for a tiny summon masquerading as a fish, and some of these things are not like the others and Itachi doesn’t understand.</p><p>“I was not aware that your brother was fit for missions,” Pein says when Itachi asks.</p><p>“He will not be a liability,” Itachi promises. He’s telling the truth. Sasuke spars like an assassin, fast and lethal and merciless in his accuracy. When he first came to Akatsuki he did it with silent obedience, never flinching, breaking his bones to ensure the win - the fear that held him still when Itachi told him to stop is something that haunts Itachi. The fact that Sasuke’s next attempt at sparring was to stand still and take the beating is worse.</p><p>Sasuke doesn’t spar much anymore. It took a long time to persuade him that he should only spar if he wanted to, and longer that he didn’t have to look to Itachi for approval each time he did. Now, Sasuke spars mostly with Tobi, each of them provoking the other into a childish argument that escalates until Sasuke disappears and reappears with a faint blue glow, kunai in hand and almost too sudden for Tobi to react. There is a fine line in the way they spar between play and honest intent, and some days Itachi worries that neither of them will know when to stop.</p><p>On other days, Itachi thinks of the man beneath the persona that Tobi wears, and worries at Madara’s interest in the way Sasuke’s eyes burn red when he fights.</p><p>He does what he can to head off their arguments before they can start.</p><p>“Aniki,” Sasuke says, tugging on Itachi’s sleeve. “<em>Aniki</em> oh my god they have <em>mochi</em> can we, what is this, is this chocolate how dare they where’s the fruit?”</p><p>“How is he your brother,” Kisame asks under his breath. “He’s like a fucking squirrel. I thought you Uchiha were meant to be serious.”</p><p>“He’s not been outside since he joined us,” Itachi rebukes. “Let him be excited.”</p><p>They pass a jewellery stall and Sasuke pauses, eyeing it curiously. Itachi choses an array of nail polish at the next one along and starts taking his time inspecting them; if he moves on, Sasuke will follow. If he’s too obvious about waiting, Sasuke will duck his head and bring himself to heel. If he’s careful, Sasuke will do what Sasuke wants, and forget that he’s meant to be a puppet playing to Itachi’s strings. He’s getting better at forgetting. Itachi’s getting better at helping him. Sasuke’s hair is long enough, now, that the gold-red clip he picks up to pull it back can gather a decent amount of it at the back of his head.</p><p>“Pretty,” Kisame says, idly leaning on his sword.</p><p>“My mum had something similar,” Sasuke replies. He unclips it and goes to put it back, and Kisame snorts and tosses a handful of yen to the seller.</p><p>“Keep it. Your hair’s a mess, about time you started doing something about it.”</p><p>Sasuke keeps it. Itachi adds another line to the list he keeps in his head of things Sasuke loves, and there is something oddly jarring about the thought of remembering their mother with gold-red hair clips instead of a life dedicated to obsessive revenge. It's... comforting. He thought, when Sasuke didn't hate him for what he did, that it meant Sasuke didn't care, and he watches Sasuke lift his hand to his new clip for the third time in as many minutes and smile at the feel of it under his fingers, and it's. Comforting. Relieving. Oddly jarring.</p><p>Itachi loves with self-destructive sacrifice, and he tried to teach Sasuke to love with vengeance because he thought it was a better way to live. Danzo taught Sasuke to love with fearful obedience. Sasuke loves with agressive care, simple joy, and a gold-red clip that reminds him of their mother, and if he loves her and he cared, then what does it mean that he doesn't hate Itachi for what he had to do? Forgiveness is a foreign concept. Perhaps it means Sasuke was too desperate to reconcile the two and the important thing about Itachi is that he can keep his brother safe, but. Sasuke's getting better at forgetting what he learnt in ROOT. If he still loves Itachi when all his fear is gone, then Itachi doesn't know what it means. The way he understands love doesn't explain it. Maybe it means the way he understood love was wrong.</p><p>Later, not the same mission but another one in another month when Itachi and Kisame leave Sasuke in another hotel room while they go to murder someone who probably didn’t deserve it, Sasuke sits on the balcony and kicks his heels against the railings and says, “Would you still love me if I was a girl?”</p><p>Itachi blinks. “Are you?” he asks.</p><p>“Depends.”</p><p>It really shouldn’t. But Sasuke is holding himself - herself - tense, in the way that says she’s not afraid of Itachi’s disapproval but that she will unmake herself to avoid it, and Itachi leans on the railing next to her and says, “Of course I would.”</p><p>“Oh. Aniki, I’m a girl.”</p><p>It’s both a surprise and not, and later, Itachi will give himself time to react to it, but for now he just tilts his head and accepts. “Ok. Are we telling Kisame?”</p><p>She purses her lips, then shakes her head and grins, a wicked glint to her eye. “See how long it takes him to work out,” she says. “He’ll be so <em>confused.</em> Can I wear a dress? Or a skirt. A really long one, all swishy.”</p><p><em>You don’t need to ask permission,</em> Itachi wants to remind her, but he doesn’t want to break the mood. “Long and swishy?” he repeats instead. “We can do that, Imouto. Are you busy this afternoon or should we shop?”</p><p>“Shop,” she says with a delighted laugh. “<em>Imouto.</em> You know, Danzo called me Itachi and thought that would keep me broken? I’m going to wear my swishy skirt and dig out his eyes with a dango stick. You can help, if you like. He’s got a lot of eyes.”</p><p>Her hair brushes her shoulders, now. It’s half pulled back in a looping braid, half left to frizz and tangle in the wind, and the tie at the end is gold-red for their mother, circled by a seal-engraved shark that will bite anyone who tries to grab her by it. It signifies almost two years of growing it, two years since she last burned it off because she was so desperate to be clean, two years since she broke into Akatsuki and nearly bled out on the floor and Kisame dumped her on Itachi to deal with and Itachi, ashamed and horrified and guilty, didn't want to.</p><p>Suicide, Danzo made them think, but they never found the body. Vengeance, Itachi had thought, and it was bitter that Sasuke had sought it outside Konoha but Itachi lost the right to judge his brother's loyalty when he sacrificed the world to keep one person safe. Sasuke was not safe. Sasuke does not live for vengeance. Itachi loves her, and it doesn't feel like sacrifice any more.</p><p>But: it signifies two years since Itachi swore that Danzo would pay and Sasuke flinched and said, achingly, braced for punishment, bewildered, “But I don't want him to die.” Two <em>years</em> Itachi’s been waiting and staying with Sasuke even when he wanted to run and hide because however Itachi loves, whether he understands it or not, Sasuke, like he always has, like she always will, comes first.</p><p>“I’d like that,” he says, with the sort of soft smile that Amaterasu hides in. “We can kill him together.”</p><p>“Family bonding, go us. Come on! I saw a place earlier, I want curry rice for lunch and they had crepes for after. <em>Crepes</em> Aniki, when did you last have crepes? I’m having strawberries on mine. Do you think they’ll have sprinkles? They’ve got to have sprinkles, those are the best bits. Hurry up Aniki, <em>sprinkles.</em> Let’s <em>go.</em>”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Sasuke, Gaara, and being united in disliking the cold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For S. who was talking about how Gaara would react to the cold. This is written after chapter 25 and takes place in some indeterminate time and universe where Sasuke stays in Konoha and Gaara therefore visits a lot. It may well in fact be the same universe as Sasuke the Makeup Thief in chapter five.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Summer is a distant dream. Konoha, entirely unfairly for somewhere that has a humid sub-tropical climate for most of the year, has plunged itself into the depths of winter. Warmth is an illusion, any respite from the biting, bone-deep ache of the blizzard is fleeting, and if Sasuke so much as <em>looks</em> at her feet wrong her toes will shatter and fall off.</p><p>The fact that Shikamaru's forcing her to train is an affront to human rights.</p><p>"It's not a blizzard<em>,</em> it's a minor breeze. It's not even snowing."</p><p>She misses when he was a lazy genin. Not that cloud watching would be much better in this weather - that one looks like <em>misery</em>, the one over there like <em>more misery, but wet </em>- but at least she could bring a sleeping bag. She hasn't even got Naruto's jacket to hide in; it, like Naruto, is off on a mission. With Sakura. And <em>Ino.</em> Sasuke needs to have words with whoever decided Team Ten was too dependent on their teamwork and mixing them up with Team Seven would be good for everyone involved, because they were wrong, she disagrees, it's completely unreasonable to expect her to work under these conditions, her bones have started to fuse together with ice at the joints -</p><p>"They haven't."</p><p>- her fingers are so blue they're <em>ultramarine -</em></p><p>"They aren't."</p><p>- frostbite is spreading through her lungs -</p><p>"It's really not."</p><p>- anyone with <em>eyes</em> can see that the weather's too bad to function in -</p><p>"It's a tiny bit chilly, stop being pathetic."</p><p>"It's cold as <em>balls</em> Nara," Sasuke complains, abandoning her diatribe to cross her arms and glare at him. Technically he's only in charge when they're actually on a mission, but it's habit by now to gravitate together for training and she and Gaara have been joining him and Chouji for morning spars for the past week. Plus, if Sasuke backs down and refuses to show up he'll take it as a win, and that's not a thing that's allowed to happen. Not on her watch.</p><p>Even if her watch is currently shivering and creaking its way to hypothermia.</p><p>"Gaara agrees with me," she continues, gesturing to where Gaara is stoically suffering in silence, then quickly relocating her hand back to the warmth of her armpit. "Which makes two of us, so you're outvoted and you're wrong<em>.</em>"</p><p>"Gaara agrees with everything you say, that's hardly a fair test," Shikamaru replies, but Chouji leans around him to ask Gaara directly.</p><p>"<em>Are</em> you cold? We can move to a dojo if you want, we just have to be a bit more careful about not breaking things."</p><p>Gaara holds himself stiffly. He hasn't given any sign that he dislikes the cold, and if he's completely honest, he doesn't know how Sasuke knows. If he's completely honest, it's possible that she doesn't; Shikamaru is not incorrect when he says that Gaara usually backs her up.</p><p>It makes her happy when he agrees with her in front of other people. Seeing as she's usually asking him to confirm that strawberry mochi are infinitely better than caramel and that people need to stop contaminating fruit-food with non-fruit flavours that don't belong, it isn't a great hardship. Plus, strawberry mochi <em>are</em> better. Strawberry anything is better. They're red and shaped like hearts and sweet, and the first ice cream Sasuke ever gave him was strawberry. He'd agree with her even if he wasn't doing it just to make her happy, because she's right, and she knew that when she picked strawberry to make her point with.</p><p>But she's not talking about ice cream now. Gaara leans forward just slightly and admits, "It's cold as balls. And wet. I do not like the wet."</p><p>"<em>See</em>," Sasuke says triumphantly. "He's a desert person, I can't believe you did this to him. How could you, Nara. You monster."</p><p>"Deserts get cold at night, it's a myth that they're always hot," Shikamaru grumbles, but seeing as Sasuke's already chivvying them up and Chouji's making suggestions about which of the Akimichi dojos would suit them best, it's a lost cause.</p><p>"Yes, but wet," Gaara says. He likes rain, and he appreciates rivers as vital resources (though if he's honest, he prefers the sand and gravel one in Sasuke's garden), but the damp chill that hangs in the air and sits cloyingly in his chest is unpleasant. It makes everything run that fraction slower, and sometimes it gets so cold it's almost painful to breathe without a barrier of sand in front of his nose to filter the air through first.</p><p>"He's right and you should listen to him," Sasuke calls from up ahead. "I've been telling Naruto we should move to Suna for <em>years</em>. I could be like a fancy rich person and have a winter mansion to escape to when it snows, just think."</p><p>"It doesn't snow in Suna," Gaara says, perking up. "You can have my room, I don't sleep in it."</p><p>It's not the first time he's offered, and Shikamaru rolls his eyes and ignores it. If he gets twitchy every time Suna - or, more accurately, Gaara - tries to poach Sasuke, he'll give himself muscle strain. So long as Naruto stays in Konoha, Sasuke stays in Konoha, and if it means that Gaara comes to visit a lot, well, he's not <em>bad</em> company once you get over that one time he tried to brutally murder Shikamaru because Sasuke got pissy with him and called him a bitch.</p><p>Though the fact that it becomes almost impossible to win any argument against her while Gaara's there, supporting her unconditionally and tilting his head with that spectacularly unnerving considering frown when anyone dares disagree with her, that he could do without. It's cheating. Not even sneaky ninja cheating either, it's just straight up. Cheating. The amount of sorbet Shikamaru's been forced to eat the past week alone is inhuman - it's the middle of <em>winter</em> for crying out loud - and his attempts to get Chouji on board in directing them to <em>anywhere else to eat</em> after their training sessions are still, frustratingly, a work in progress. He regrets ever allowing Chouji to be friends with Sasuke. His good nature is being taken advantage of, damnit, and Shikamaru is being force fed frozen food as a result, and it's <em>cheating.</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Sasuke in ROOT: Sharks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Following the ROOT timeline, Turix asked if Itachi died and if so, what happened after. They also mentioned Sasuke stalking Team Seven and playing pranks, or visiting Suna and giving Gaara gifts, but these things have to happen in the context of the answer which is: yes. Itachi died.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I would normally edit out the comment parts leading into comment-fics before posting them as a chapter, but it didn't feel right to cut that out this time, so. Something a bit different for you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Honestly, I don't think I could kill Itachi in this one. The previous two in the Sasuke in ROOT series were very much designed to be bitter without the sweet, but Itachi's chapter branched off towards Sasuke healing and recovering and Itachi's death would just. Take all of that growth, and rip it out. No space for hope because death is an end, no space for humour because Sasuke's humour is a form of defiance and what the hell would she be fighting against, no way to build something stronger out of the ashes because all of Sasuke's strength comes from her belief that the world can be good and all of her confidence comes from the fact that Itachi is invincible so she doesn't have to be afraid and.</p><p>And if Itachi died? Not even to an enemy, but to <em>illness</em>? Sasuke escaped Danzo, but she didn't escape his conditioning. She just retargeted it. It isn't fair to Itachi, it's in no way fair to Itachi, and he isn't the superhuman that Sasuke subconsciously believes he is, but it's what she did. The horrible thing about an illness is that you can see it coming. God. I couldn't write that. The time limit, the way Itachi would try to detangle her from wrapping all she is in the safety of him like she still steals his cloak and wraps herself in it to sleep, the way Sasuke would hurt and spit and fight back in response to get closer and refuse to believe what Itachi knows is true. Every time Itachi stumbles, every time he coughs, he feels guilty for it, and Sasuke loves with aggressive care but no amount of <em>love</em> can keep someone alive when their body shuts down around them and when Itachi fails, when Sasuke <em>fails</em> to hold onto him and all that's left is -</p><p>Fire. All that's left is fire. The immolation jutsu. The first jutsu she taught herself when she was seven years old and alone and burying the clan because Itachi left her behind. The first way she failed, on the road to Wave, when Kakashi gave her a leaf and she wasn't Uchiha enough to make it burn. She lit herself on fire in Danzo's cells and burnt her hair off because it was the only way she could be clean. She wreathes Itachi in flames and refuses to let them go out because it's the only thing she knows to do. When Uchihas die, there is fire. Itachi left her behind. All she has is fire.</p><p>In the end, Kisame uses Samehada to take her chakra. It's the only way to stop her; she just saw her brother die, her eyes are mangekyou-red and bleeding, the fire burns white to blue to black and water doesn't work against Amaterasu's flames. In theory, they are unstoppable, in theory if Kisame will let her recover her chakra and her eyes will heal enough to support it, Sasuke could take her black fire and leave a trail of destruction in her wake that no one could ever recover from. In theory.</p><p>In reality she can't. There's no one to aim it at. A disease is not a person. Who the fuck do you blame, who do you wipe from the earth to make the earth safe, who do you run to make the world <em>safe</em> when there's no one, when the reality is that you're never safe and anyone could be taken from you and how can people live like this? How is Sasuke meant to live with this?</p><p>Perhaps she goes to Orochimaru. "They say you can raise the dead," she could say. Or perhaps, "They say you can make someone immortal," or maybe even, "Kisame won't let me die."</p><p>Perhaps she goes to Danzo. Not back to him, never back to him, he's already dead and she and Itachi already killed him, but he is the source of everything wrong - him and Konoha and she has water that she doesn't want dripping from her fingertips and sharks that aren't hers following in her wake but she clenches her fists and opens her eyes till they bleed and perhaps Konoha would burn. It would burn. Fire cleanses. Fire doesn't bring Itachi back.</p><p>Perhaps she goes to Obito. "Your moon makes people forget," she'd tell him. "That's the point, right? It's the matrix world. Choose the blue pill, ignore how shit it is and just fucking <em>pretend</em> that everything's ok, I don't even care if the stupid tree eats you I just want to make it <em>stop</em> -"</p><p>Perhaps she screams at Kisame and bares her teeth and fights him when he takes her chakra away again and doesn't let her burn. Not white, not blue, not red-black-red; he bares his own teeth back and tells her she's her own person and Itachi's dead but she isn't and if she won't live for herself then she better find <em>something</em> because he's too damn invested to let her give up now. There are sharks that aren't hers following in her wake, pretty things she didn't buy shut away in her wardrobe while she wraps herself in Itachi's cloak and won't let go, arguments she wasn't there for where Kisame glowers and refuses to take another partner because his hands are full enough with the one he has. Kisame mourns in his own way and sharks have a lot of teeth to bare; there's nothing kind in the way he saves her and nothing grateful in the way she digs at his weak spots and refuses to let him ignore his grief in turn.</p><p>If Itachi's death is just a brief interlude before the story in chapter one, then perhaps this is how the Sasuke that Itachi was learning about love from turns into the ghost who tells Kakashi that next time he kills himself he'll die. Kicking her heels against the balcony railings, swishy skirts and curry rice with crepes to follow; that girl died. Danzo didn't kill her. It's not for Danzo that she calls herself a ghost. She stalks Team Seven because she's learnt how easy it is for even heroes to end, but she doesn't prank them. Not in this universe.</p><p>But if this is the start of its own story then she'd go to the sharks. Down in the ocean, at the bottom of the sea and deeper again than that, there are sharks that have lived unceasing for tens of millions of years, sluggish and patient and unyielding to time or death or change. There were sharks in the seas before the dinosaurs took the land. There will be sharks in the seas after the land is scorched and dry. The little cousin that lived in Sasuke's pond hooks its teeth in her wrist and she gives herself nintey seconds in a glowing blue bubble and doesn't care that it's going to run out, and she follows it. Down. Down and down and down until the water presses in against her and she can't breathe. There's no light at the bottom of the sea. She's meant to be an Uchiha made of fire, and she's in a water world where her eyes don't work, and sharks, I think, would make good sages.</p><p>A shark does not break. If their teeth fall out they grow new ones. The world is dangerous, of course; orca hunt sharks, seals and sea lions if the shark is small enough, fishermen with their traps and nets and knives - but down down down in the deep where the air-breathers dare not go? It's other sharks you have to fear, and the only way to survive is to want to. Not even the little shark she built a rock garden for will fight her battles for her: in the dark and the quiet where time doesn't mean anything, the sharks ask, Do you want to survive?</p><p>Do you want to survive?</p><p>There is no fear. She can say no, if she wants. There is no time. She can think about her answer, if she wants. There is no danger. Death can be a freedom, if she wants.</p><p>Do you want to survive? It's up to you. No one else will make her choice. No one else will fight so she doesn't have to. No one else will take responsibility for her life and for all the desperation and all the panic, has she ever looked at herself and had to decide before if it's worth it? If she's worth it? There is no fear. Is she worth it? Does she <em>want</em> to be worth it?</p><p>Yes, she says. She has to be certain. Nature chakra will turn you to stone if you aren't. She's a long way from the surface. She lifts her chin and stares through the blackness at the sharks she cannot see, and she says, Yes. I want to survive.</p><p>The next time Kisame sees her she steps out the water he summoned and bares her teeth hello. Her eyes are black; they will not bleed red again, but in the night they glow to help her see. We set her to stalking Team Seven in the other universe so in this one we'll send her to Gaara, lazy and calm and not afraid; he is a danger and Shukaku is a bijuu but all Sasuke sees in their anger are people trapped in a world that moves too fast and gives no space to choose.</p><p>"There's more sand than just the desert," she says, sitting on the balcony and drumming her heels against the railings. "Have you ever been to the beach?"</p><p>He hasn't. He tries to kill her. Please; the pressure at the bottom of the sea is several thousand times that at the surface, she will not be crushed by this. "I think you'd like it," she says. "I'll buy you an ice cream for when we're there."</p><p>He hesitates, the sand draining out slowly, confused at the lack of blood. "You didn't validate my existence," he accuses, but it comes out sounding lost and unsure.</p><p>"I validate in other ways. Come on; the sea's not far if I take you." She holds out her hand. I'm not sure why, in this universe, Naruto did not; perhaps Sasuke's suicide meant he couldn't, perhaps Sasuke's suicide meant Orochimaru wasn't there to set it up so he had to, but this isn't Naruto's story. Sasuke holds out her hand and waits for Gaara to choose, all the patience of millions of years in her stride. Her hair is tied back with a gold-red tie for her mother, circled with a seal-engraved shark that Kisame gave her so no one would grab her by it; her eyes are black like the bottom of the ocean and will never spin red again. She wears a skirt, swishy and long, and Itachi's cloak thrown over it and left open to sway in the breeze. The dango she was eating is held in her other hand and her fingers are sticky from the syrup. She waits.</p><p>"What's ice cream?" He asks as he steps forwards and takes her hand, and she flashes him a smile and says, "You'll see."</p><p>He does. Feet in the surf, waves at his ankles, the sand running out between his toes; Sasuke collects pebbles and stacks them into rock gardens and the tiny shark that swims up to join her knocks them over with its tail in a huff. She laughs, and gets the hem of her skirt wet, and brings Gaara a shell with a hole through it to show him the pretty colour, and if there's catharsis in this story it comes from the vast expanse of the ocean and the stars glittering off it in the dark, in the timeless nature of running away in the middle of the night with a fey girl in a black-red cloak who gives you ice cream by the sea, in the echoing silence when all your fears go quiet and someone asks you if you want to survive and you realise that the answer is, Yes. You realise that the truth is, You do.</p><p>You have to be certain. You might die. Even your brother was vulnerable in the end. If there's catharsis though it comes from looking at yourself and saying, But before that. Before I die, first I want to live. Not for anyone else. Not because I'm afraid of the alternative, not because my time is running out and I have to make a choice. Just. For me.</p><p>Sasuke lifts her chin to the world and stares at the dangers she cannot see and says, Yes. I want to survive.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Sasuke and Shikamaru: Shikamaru</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Naras are known for thinking, but even by those standards, Shikamaru thinks about Sasuke a lot.</p><p>More Shikamaru and in particular a Shikamaru pairing has been requested by a fair few people, so voila, I deliver. Written after chapter 26 of the main fic and primarily set an unspecified number of years into a version of the future where Sasuke stays in Konoha. RE shipping; nothing underage, nothing overly explicit actually happens, but Shikamaru's thoughts are less restrained.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When they were kids, Shikamaru didn’t think much of Sasuke. He was wide-eyed and hopeful, and he wore his emotions writ large on his face like he thought no one would notice them otherwise. When he was happy, his smiles were easy and bright; when he was sad, he pouted, shoulders slumped and feet dragging along the floor.</p><p>Then his family died, and it was like that Sasuke died with them. The one that replaced him was closed where he used to be open. He held himself stiffly, he waited for others to react and copied what they did. Nothing about him was honest, and if there was anything hopeful in his perpetual frown and sharp-edged comments, he kept it well hidden.</p><p>He <em>seemed</em> to like Chouji well enough, but he seemed to do a lot of things that Shikamaru wasn’t sure he actually did.</p><p>After graduation, that should have been it. He ended up on a team with two people he’d spent the last few years actively avoiding, and at least for the first couple of months Shikamaru didn’t see him. He’d probably grow up to be a ninja as cold and efficient as any were, following orders and scowling his way through to perfect performances in everything he did. It was what he’d always done at the academy.</p><p>But… He’s not. His image as the best he can be has slipped. He follows, doesn’t try to lead, and is happier about it than he ever had been alone. He turns to Naruto, angling his shoulders towards him even when he's talking to someone else. In combat he circles warily, protectively, and when he relaxes his limbs are loose and he doesn’t look afraid.</p><p>When Sakura is down, he tries to cheer her up. Awkwardly. With simple things. He likes bright colours, and ice cream, and flowers. Somehow Shikamaru isn’t surprised to learn that he talks to his fish. He hates being told what to do, but if he thinks something will help then he’ll do it, and if he thinks twice what the cost will be to him - well. Maybe he does, but it doesn't change the fact that he does it anyway.</p><p>Or maybe he does, but Shikamaru is missing what the cost would be. He thinks again of the difference between Sasuke at the academy and Sasuke with a team - hell, between Sasuke who had his family and Sasuke after they died. The one Sasuke is open, heart on his sleeve, happy. Likes people, for all he claims he doesn't. The other... But even at the academy, Sasuke always brought in sweet things. Strawberries, dango, grapes, mochi - the things he liked. But he always gave them to Chouji. If he preferred the chips Chouji brought then surely he’d’ve got his own; the answer, Shikamaru realises, is not that he’d rather have chips than whichever sweet he brought for himself. It’s that he’d rather share his food with someone who smiled at him for it, and if there's a cost and a benefit to what Sasuke does, then at least he's consistent in what he values most.</p><p>After the Forest of Death where Sasuke panicked because he thought Shikamaru was in danger, then panicked again because he thought they were all going to die, and Shikamaru wasn’t fast enough to reach out with his shadow and stop him running away and taking the danger with him - After, Sasuke blinks at them all in surprise, and says that life is good because there are mangoes in the world. He tilts his head, hopeful, confused, and there’s a part of Shikamaru that wants to scream at him because <em>how can he say that when people might be dead -</em></p><p>Except to Sasuke, it’s true. The world is bad. People die. He knows more than most the scars they can leave when they do. But he has bright colours, and ice cream, and flowers; he has his team. Later, Shikamaru will add dogs to this list. Sitting too close to Naruto when it’s cold and he pretends that all he wants from him is his warmth. Arranging Sakura’s hair into a new and more elaborate braid, because his own hair is too unruly for it to work. Splitting his lunch with Chouji, because Chouji smiles when he does and because things are better when they’re shared.</p><p>Ino muscles her way in in the end. It takes her a while, and she struggles to get over the image she had of him before, but she’s determined. She will not be left out of the circle of happiness that Sasuke brings.</p><p>It’s fragile.</p><p>The others think Sasuke is innocent. Maybe he is; he blushes when they talk about porn, and he’s desperately convinced that kids should be kids and that Naruto’s trio of tagalongs are too young to know about perverts and death and ninja life. Shikamaru wants to point out that they weren’t any older when they learnt, but he doesn't. He wants to point out that Sasuke was younger than the kids are now when his family died, but he doesn't do that either. Sasuke doesn’t eat meat, and believes Naruto when he says that heroes only ever kill the bad guys, as though they weren't ninjas and their lives didn't belong to other people, as though heroes weren't just people and people weren't too flawed and too small to ever stand up to the system they've all been born to.</p><p>These too, Shikamaru doesn't say. If Sasuke is innocent, it feels wrong to spoil it for him. If Sasuke is not innocent, then Shikamaru would be wrong, and though that happens more than he'd like it to Shikamaru doesn't make a habit of letting people know when it does.</p><p>Gaara is a monster. His killing intent is wild, angry and bitter and <em>insatiable</em> and Sasuke himself admits that Gaara’s tried to kill him multiple times before. But Sasuke also believes that Gaara can be good, that <em>people</em> can be good, and under the unfailing weight of his faith, Gaara is. Slowly. Falteringly. It’s impossible not to try to be, when Sasuke smiles and says you are.</p><p>In Wave, Shikamaru learns, Sasuke put himself between an enemy and an assassination jutsu because he thought the enemy was kind and didn’t deserve to die. Shikamaru doesn’t bring it up and doesn’t ask, because some things he knows are private, but it’s not the only time Sasuke puts himself in danger to save people around him. When Shikamaru asks about these other times, these other people, Sasuke says: they’re important.</p><p>Like he isn’t. Like the world wouldn’t be changed without him there to see the best in it. Like Shikamaru wouldn’t be changed without him there to remind him that life is also good. Not that he thinks life isn't; it is, of course it is, and Shikamaru knows this in the way he knows many things, but - he would never have thought of mangoes by himself. </p><p>Naruto holds too tightly. He sees, like Shikamaru sees, that Sasuke is precious and worth protecting, but he doesn’t know how not to hold with everything he has and he’s in danger of suffocating Sasuke with his care. Sakura tries to be more balanced, but she, too, is in too deep, and Sasuke isn’t comforted by the lengths that either of them will go to for him. It scares him. It makes him draw back and retreat, and Shikamaru remembers, again, the boy from the academy who held himself too tight and watched the world from guarded eyes, used sharp words and sharper scowls to hide himself away.</p><p>Sasuke isn’t that boy anymore. He can’t be, and even though he draws back from his team, he doesn’t hide. Chouji is too soft to push like Naruto pushes. Ino is more invested in the group and in Sakura than in Sasuke himself, though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. Shikamaru…</p><p>“Hush,” Sasuke says, wrinkling his nose and settling deeper against Shikamaru’s side. “Chouji’s not here. You’re comfy. Stop making a thing of it.”</p><p>“I wasn’t,” Shikamaru says, and tilts his shoulders to provide a better head rest. He’s subtle in doing so, and he doesn’t raise his arm to wrap around Sasuke’s own shoulders like he wants to, and that’s better, he thinks. Team Seven talk in emotions, hearts held out and bleeding, and when Sasuke can’t handle it he retreats to Team Ten and uses the quiet to work things out until he knows what he wants to say.</p><p>What she wants to say. It’s more of a surprise than perhaps it should be, but it suits her. Shikamaru waits for his mind to draw the connections, to say <em>oh, well she’s a woman so no wonder she’s the way she is,</em> except it never does. Sasuke is Sasuke. It doesn’t really matter what gender she is. There are old instincts picked up from his parents that tell him to keep Sasuke close, now that she’s a woman - that he knows she's a woman - to protect her, fight her battles so she’ll never get hurt - but they aren’t right. Sasuke wouldn’t appreciate them. So Shikamaru doesn’t.</p><p>She comes to him when she needs to think, and he tries to help her, but he can’t always follow the things she says are obvious. Why does it matter that children are children and shouldn’t be asked to fight? If they have the skills, make them use them, that’s what Shikamaru’s always been told. Sasuke thinks they should be children first and ninja second, and there’s something almost treasonous in the way she says the Hokage doesn’t own anyone because people own themselves. But his questions don’t annoy her, or make her waver in her beliefs. If anything, he strengthens them for her, pointing out the flaws in her arguments until she’s found a way to word it so what’s in her head makes sense to the outside world.</p><p>She still uses too many sweets in her metaphors.</p><p>On good days, she sits near him, shoulders brushing casually; or near Chouji, or Sakura, or Naruto, or even Ino if Ino's there. Years without being touched have left her starved for it in a way that her friends are more than happy to oblige. On bad days, she holds herself apart, still and quiet, or sits so close she’s practically hiding behind them while she waits for the world to go away.</p><p>When they take missions together and it’s just them, she teases, sticks her tongue out at him, burrows under his jacket because the nights are cold, crouches next to him with her eyes spinning red as she covers them both in genjutsu. With her illusions and his shadows, they do a lot of missions together. She doesn’t kill people unless she thinks they’re bad guys. He tries to do the same.</p><p>“I don’t like sleeping by myself,” she says once, face settled into a combative glare as though she thinks he’ll turn her away. “Naruto moved himself in when we were twelve, it’s weird when he’s not there.”</p><p>“I don’t mind you sharing,” he says, pitching his voice to sound tired and unbothered and bored. “But jeez, couldn’t you be quiet about it?” She huffs at him, pushes him over with her elbows until there’s space on the bed for her to fit, and steals the blanket. He lies awake long after she’s gone to sleep, and in the morning he untangles their legs before she gets up and turns the shower to cold.</p><p>It’s normal, he tells himself. They aren’t twelve any more. It doesn’t mean anything. She comes to him when the world is too loud and has too many emotions. He can’t afford to muck that up.</p><p>She frowns in concentration as she puts her hair up with a pretty flower clip, and smiles in satisfaction when it’s done. She takes his hand and drags him over to an ice cream cart, ordering an extra scoop of the flavour she’s decided he likes best, and she smiles then too. They spar, and she beats him, pinning him down with her knees either side of his chest and sweat running down the curve of her neck, and the smile she has then is sharp and victorious and pleased. When she pushes off him and stretches in a boneless arch, she grins, and tells him that’s the third spar in a row she’s won, is he going to finally admit she’s better or does she have to beat him again?</p><p>She never used to smile so often. Shikamaru never used to take this many cold showers.</p><p>On a mission in Iron there’s a castle and a secret meeting to spy on, and their contact turns sour and the only place they can find to hide is small and close and cramped. She is a line of warmth against his front, taut and stretched as she strains her senses to track their pursuers, and Shikamaru closes his eyes and breathes and tells himself that he is stronger than a too-tight space and a fucking cliché.</p><p>“Boost me,” she says, brushing against him as she turns, and Shikamaru abandons breathing. “I can switch us out, but I need to see.” She wriggles up his front until he gets the hint and grips under her thighs to lift her, and his neck hurts from how hard he’s straining to stop his head tilting forward against her chest, and he’s stronger than this, but not by much, and the only thing stopping him is how desperately he doesn’t want to muck it up.</p><p>She and Naruto are better, now, than they were when they were genin. Naruto still holds too tight sometimes and his emotions are still too loud, and for all Sasuke loves him she sometimes needs to retreat. Shikamaru is quiet, and calm, and lets her think, and if he ruins that with his emotions he doesn’t know what she’ll do.</p><p>Nara are not fond of taking risks when they don’t know all the odds.</p><p>They get out, her kawarimi and genjutsu, his shadows and strategies, and they run, and she smiles and he returns it and when the night comes and they make camp she curls up against him in the tree and he thinks, <em>If I kissed you, you’d taste like ice cream.</em> He’s never kissed anyone before. He thinks, <em>If I bit your lip when you smiled, you’d open your mouth, and if I ran my fingers through your hair they’d catch on the tangles and pull your head back, and if I kissed you on the neck I could leave a bruise.</em> It’s his watch; she’s asleep, and she works her way further under his arm because it’s too risky to light a fire for warmth where anyone could see the smoke, and he thinks, <em>If I held your hips and licked I bet I could make you scream.</em></p><p>His grip on her doesn’t tighten because, remember, he’s stronger than this, but his shadow wraps twice around her and doesn’t want to let go.</p><p>When they’re home, they train, and she frowns at him because she’s now won every spar for a month, and he avoids her eyes and tells her she’s sneaky when she wants to be. It makes her hard to beat.</p><p>“<em>I</em> make me hard to beat,” she corrects, confident in her skills. “I’m fast and tricky and it’s why you love me. You can’t blame it all on not seeing me coming.”</p><p>His heart skips. If she notices, she doesn’t show it. He’s good at hiding his reaction to her emotions; for all she’s quiet she’s still Team Seven, and she spent too long before that being afraid and being alone. Now that she found people she likes, now that she's <em>allowed</em> to love them and keep them close, she does; freely, loudly, with a fierce joy that delights in the way they love her back.</p><p>When she says love, she means bright colours, ice cream, flowers. Dogs. Her fish. Her friends. Shikamaru.</p><p>When he says love, he thinks he means just her.</p><p>He doesn’t let himself say love.</p><p>She watches him though. She doesn’t pull back, and she doesn’t ask, but there’s something questioning in her expression when she tucks herself against him, as if checking that it’s ok. He knows, because he’s watching her back just as carefully. He has been for a while.</p><p>“Sasuke told me she can’t have children,” Sakura says, leaning against the door and looking unimpressed. “I assume the message was meant for you.”</p><p>Shikamaru pauses. If it was, he wasn’t expecting it. “I’m… sorry to hear?” he tries. He knows, of course, that Sasuke was born a boy, but it seems unimportant compared to everything else he knows about her.</p><p>“Are you?” Sakura asks. She raises an eyebrow. “Sasuke doesn’t want kids. Not with the sharingan. And she disagrees with the way the clans run the village and no one else gets a say, so she got rid of the Uchiha seat.”</p><p>“... Ah,” he says. Sasuke’s campaign to reform Konoha is not new information. She and Sakura have been working on it for years. Sasuke says she’s waiting for Naruto to be Hokage before she pushes the worst of it through, but privately Shikamaru thinks that they’ll run out of patience and put Sakura under the hat instead. Naruto, for all his ideals, is better suited to other things.</p><p>“God, you’re both idiots,” Sakura tells him, and shakes her head as she leaves.</p><p>It feels like a test, but Shikamaru’s mind shies away from the obvious conclusion. Sasuke is too important to lose. In his dreams he pants her name and she is wet around him when he comes, but when she steals his shirt and wears it he rolls his eyes and calls her a thief and doesn’t let his thoughts show on his face.</p><p>These are the thoughts he doesn’t let show: <em>If you weren’t wearing anything else I could close my mouth over your skin through the mesh, and when you arched your back I could run my hands underneath and lift you onto me, and if I pushed the shirt over your head I could tangle it over your wrists and kiss you until you begged me to let you touch.</em></p><p>“I like it,” she says lightly. “It smells of you.”</p><p>Behind her back he closes his eyes and breathes, and reminds himself that Naras don’t take risks unless they know they’ll win.</p><p>She wears it again, another time, another day, another spar that she’s too close to winning and if Shikamaru’s honest it’s not because he’s distracted. When he spars, he isn’t. He can’t afford to be; she’s fast, and vicious with her speed. Kakashi was an ANBU assassin for almost a decade, and she is more his student than either Sakura or Naruto are. She stays on stealth and recon with him because she wants to, extraction and sabotage and long nights just the two of them hiding from the world, but if she ever ends up in combat she reminds her enemies who trained her and why the sharingan should be feared.</p><p>The answer to that is: she flicks it off when she knows you're going to die. He has seen jounin pray when she flicks her sharingan off, and she says it’s because she’d rather remember her plants than her kills but he has to wonder if she knows the effect she has.</p><p>She still doesn’t kill people unless she thinks they’re bad guys. What people don’t understand is it that you have to win before you can be kind. A desperate ninja will end the fight any way they can, but Sasuke is calm when she guides her opponents to safety. She says she learnt it from someone when she was young. She says she owes them her life.</p><p>She says, when she sees the trap Shikamaru has laid, “Wire? That's my thing. You're seriously using <em>wire</em> against me and expecting to win?”</p><p>He wasn’t. She was wearing his shirt, and Shikamaru had thought <em>if I pushed it over your head I could tangle your wrists in it</em> and the thought had stuck, and the wire wasn’t meant to <em>beat</em> her because he can’t do that even when he isn’t distracted but he was distracted enough, this time, that he hadn’t realised what trap he’d made until it was too late to change.</p><p>Because she’s expecting it to do something else, she doesn’t see the parts he’s hidden, and he allows himself to grin in satisfaction when it catches over her hands and pulls them tight. She’s already moving, already dodging, but when he tackles her it’s not a ninja move and they both end up on the ground. He rolls until she’s beneath him, his knee between her legs and his elbows either side of her chest while his shadow holds the wire taut and drags her wrists above her head, and in his thoughts he pants her name but what he says outloud is, “Got bored of losing the usual way, I thought I’d try something new.”</p><p>“Really?” she asks, tensing beneath him as she tests how tightly she’s being held. He’s bigger, and stronger, and he knows better than to leave her the space to kawarimi out from under him, but her hands are almost free and his time is nearly up.</p><p>He thinks, <em>If I kissed you until your air ran out your chest would heave and I would feel it against me,</em> he thinks <em>would you say my name if I buried my hands in your hair and pulled or should I cup them over your cheeks and kiss your forehead till you smile,</em> he thinks <em>if you get free you’ll use the wire to attack me and you’re too close for me to get away.</em></p><p>He moves up until he can reach her hands with his, pinning her wrists down with one hand and using the other to catch her fingers in his shadow and hold them still. She tilts her head back so she can see, sharingan spinning as she fights to work herself loose even from this, and she will, he knows he can’t keep her here for long.</p><p>He thinks, <em>If I bent my head I could feel the pulse in your neck with my tongue and taste it speed up when I pressed my fingers inside.</em></p><p>He thinks, <em>If I weren’t me, I’d kill me for thinking about you like this, and I’m so sorry but I don’t know how to stop.</em></p><p>He has never been so bothered by morals as she is. Sometimes it feels like a failing, and he has learnt so many things from listening to her work out what she believes, but sometimes he feels it’s important, because there are still times when the world is dark and she is scared and he knows he’ll do anything to keep her safe and never mind the cost.</p><p>There are secrets, even now, she keeps from him. If he were Naruto, they would horrify him. If he were Sakura, they’d make him angry. If he were Chouji, he wouldn’t believe them, and if he were Ino, he’d say that sometimes the world was shit but you had to live in it anyway.</p><p>He’s not. He’s Shikamaru, and she's too good at keeping secrets for him to know them all but he knows enough. Give him a few more months, and so will Konoha, if she wants, and when Danzo’s exposed for what he’s done Shikamaru will stand behind her and watch. If she wants his head, she’ll have it. If she wants his eyes, he’ll give them to her; if she wants to take them herself, he'll guard her back so she can. If she wants to forgive Danzo for the murder of her clan, for everything that came after and everything that happened before, Shikamaru’ll grit his teeth against his own hatred and see it done.</p><p>He doesn’t think she’ll choose forgiveness.</p><p>He thinks <em>wait the wire is gone -</em></p><p>“Got you,” she says, looping it around his own wrists and pulling tight. “Told you you couldn’t beat me with <em>wire</em>.”</p><p>He makes himself heavier, using his shadow to anchor himself to the ground. “You’re still pinned,” he points out. “Even without my hands I’m pretty sure I’ve won.”</p><p>He hasn’t, they both know; she could kawarimi them both above the tree tops and spin away from him as they fell, catch him in an illusion and make him think she was gone, reach out with an arm of chakra and pry his shadows away.</p><p>She wrinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out at him, and his eyes flick down to it before he can stop himself. It’s only later he thinks to wonder if she did that on purpose; for now, she uses the distraction to lift herself on her elbows and press their lips together. Her tongue is still out. She swipes it over the seam between his lips and he’s too surprised to let her in.</p><p>“<em>Now</em> I’ve won,” she says, settling back with a smug satisfaction. “Ino’s been working on a poisoned lipstick. If I’d been wearing it, you’d be dead.”</p><p>“A poisoned lipstick,” he repeats, his voice coming out as a strangled croak.</p><p>“Mmm,” she hums, the sound vibrating through where their chests are pressed together, and the spar’s ended now so Shikamaru should push himself off and let her up but his hands are still caught in the wire and his muscles don’t appear to work. “I’m not wearing it now. So. You can kiss me. If you want.”</p><p>When his eyes snap back to hers, he realises that her sharingan is off. She always turns it off before she kills someone. He thinks he might understand why it makes people so afraid when she does.</p><p>“Kiss you,” he repeats again, no less strangled than before.</p><p>She tilts her head. “If you want,” she agrees, and it’s said with confidence but he knows her and it’s - he pauses, and looks at her again, properly looks at her without his thoughts getting in the way. She’s nervous. Her sharingan is off because she doesn’t want to remember, because she’s worried it might go wrong. Her expression is verging on guarded, and her throat’s working like she’s running through words and doesn’t know which ones to say.</p><p>He closes his eyes. She’s scared. He is her safety when emotions get too much. He desperately doesn’t want to muck anything up.</p><p>It’s grounding, and when he opens his eyes again he’s steady. Nara don’t take risks unless they know they’ll win, but Sasuke’s more important than that.</p><p>“I want,” he says, and his voice has dropped to something low and almost purring without his permission. “But only if you do.” It’s awkward with his hands still tied, and he could take the minute to work himself free of the wire but instead he pushes himself to his elbows and holds himself enough away from her that she could kawarimi out from under him.</p><p>Of all things, it makes her scowl at him in offence. “I could’ve got out any time I wanted,” she huffs, kicking at his shin with her foot. “Honestly. <em>Only if you do </em>- what kind of line is that, did you get it from a -”</p><p>He kisses her. She blinks, and he feels her eyelashes against his cheek. He’s too high; he repositions, tilting his head to work out how their noses fit, moving down so he can close his teeth over her lower lip and tug insistently until her mouth opens. He thinks, distantly, that she’s arching up against him, and there was something he always thought he’d do with that, but her tongue is hesitant against his and she doesn’t taste of ice cream like he thought she would, he doesn’t <em>know</em> what she tastes of but he tries to move his hands to her face to brush his fingers over her cheeks and growls in frustration when they’re still tied together and he bends his neck instead until he can slot his mouth more closely over hers and -</p><p>“Fuck,” she pants, dropping her head back to the ground. “Shitting, fuck Shikamaru, a girl’s got to breathe, the hell size are your damn <em>lungs</em>.”</p><p>“Screw breathing,” he says, too ragged to be sexy but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything more. “Do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do that, who cares about <em>breathing.</em>”</p><p>“<em>I</em> do,” she complains, and hits her palm against his chest. “Up, let me up. You’re crushing me.”</p><p>He sits up. It’s awkward - he finally gets out of the wire, and that helps - and it feels like loss, but she asked him to so he does. When he goes to pull away though she follows him, pushing at his shoulders until he’s sat with his back against a tree and his knees slightly raised to support her as she straddles him with her legs either side of his waist.</p><p>He thinks, <em>fuck.</em></p><p>His hands are on her hips. She goes to settle further into his lap and he grips her convulsively, keeping her on her knees. His heart is racing and his mouth is dry; she’s wearing his shirt and he can feel her skin through the mesh where his hands have slipped up to her waist. He holds his palms and fingers still but he moves his thumbs, small concentric circles just below her stomach that make her shiver, and a part of his brain is logging which spots produce the best result and calculating how if he changed his grip he could make the shirt ruck up and dip his fingers below her waistband, push them lower over her hips -</p><p>Most of his brain is still occupied with incoherent swear words. Her hands are on his shoulders and she’s leaning down to him, face set almost in a combative scowl and eyes still fierce and black.</p><p>“Don’t make things weird, Nara,” she warns before she kisses him. She uses teeth this time, biting down hard on his lip until he opens his mouth for her, pressing against him until his head is digging back into the bark behind him. He lifts one of his hands towards her but she moves her elbow and blocks him; it ends up resting on her ribs, just far forwards enough that if he stretched his fingers out he’d be palming her chest. Her own hands hold him still, and the way her thighs are gripping him is more taijutsu than making out.</p><p>“Sasuke,” he says, trying to turn away. She growls and follows him, nipping at his nose in protest.</p><p>“I said not to make it weird,” she says and ducks her head to kiss him again. The hand on her ribs is still trapped by her elbow, pinned just out of reach of her chest; when he goes to move the other hand from her waist she sinks down, lowering herself onto his lap until he freezes her with his shadow. He has to keep his own muscles tensed to stop her moving hers, and that’s good, because if he didn’t he’d buck up into her and he wants so much it <em>hurts</em> but her eyes are black and her sharingan is off and she does that when she doesn’t want to remember what she sees.</p><p>“<em>Sasuke,</em>” he repeats, moving his head back. Caught in his shadow she mimics him, glaring as she’s forced to stop.</p><p>“<em>What</em>?” she snarls. “I’m not blind. I actually <em>do</em> know how long you’ve been wanting to do that. And now you can. So. The fuck are you being so difficult for?”</p><p><em>I’m difficult</em>, he repeats incredulously, but only in his head. “I want to,” is what he says out loud, “But only if you do.”</p><p>“And? You already said that.”</p><p>“You didn’t,” he points out. He kissed her before she could, he knows that’s on him, and the only defence he has is that he’d given her an out and she hadn’t taken it and he’d wanted enough to risk -</p><p>Of course she hadn’t taken it. She’s Sasuke, he thinks with a despairing, aching kind of love. When would she ever take the easy way out?</p><p>“Sasuke,” he says, slowly, forcing his thoughts to be quiet. “Do you want me to kiss you?”</p><p>“I’m here, aren’t I?” she bites out, but her eyes are still black and they flit away.</p><p>“You can still be here if you say no,” he says, then shakes his head in annoyance. “I mean, I’ll still be here. You don’t have to kiss me to keep me around. I’m not going to leave you if you don’t.”</p><p>She looks at him like she doesn’t believe him. Team Seven, he remembers, love too fiercely and almost drove her away by trying to keep her too close. Her brother nearly killed her with his love. She comes to Team Ten when the world is big and she needs to be quiet, and he is her shelter when emotions get too much.</p><p>He changes his grip on her. Still holding her, but gentler, now, and the circles he strokes over her skin are soft. He relaxes his shadow and curls around her when she slides down to sit on his stomach, but he’s subtle about it. He doesn’t press.</p><p>“You want me to kiss you,” she says haltingly. “You want me to want you.”</p><p>“I do,” he says. “I want a lot of things. But I’m still not abandoning you if you don’t.”</p><p>She flinches, and covers it by raising her shoulders defensively and scowling. “Don’t martyr yourself,” she spits. “I don’t need coddling, and pining isn’t romantic. It’s <em>stupid</em>.”</p><p>He forces his own frustration down. “I’m not. Why is it so hard to believe that I’ll stay?” His frustration and, though he suppresses it, his hurt. He’s not Naruto, he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve - but <em>when</em> in the years they’ve been partners, even before that when they were still chunin or genin who mostly worked with other teams, when has he ever given the impression he’s only in it to fuck her?</p><p>“And when you get your head out your ass and realise who I actually am?” she shoots back. “I’m not going to be your wife or give you a family, I’m not a good person and I’m not - I don’t need <em>protecting</em> all the time, I’m not some innocent little <em>thing</em> you can keep safe like a damn house cat that sleeps in your bed and steals your clothes and -”</p><p>“Give me some credit,” he interrupts, glaring at her. “I know you have secrets. Everyone has secrets. It doesn’t stop me also knowing who you are or how good you are or that you’re not a <em>house</em> <em>cat</em>.”</p><p>(When they aren’t arguing and he isn’t struggling to keep the conversation from breaking apart, he’ll think of how she always insists she isn’t good when she’s one of the best people he knows. The fact that she isn’t innocent makes it more important; she holds onto her kindnesses and the ways the world can be made better because she knows more than most how bad it can get if people don’t.)</p><p>“And if I say I don’t want you?” she says. “If I tell you to piss off, and go find someone to train with who isn’t letting me win all the time?”</p><p>“I’m not letting you win, for fuck’s sake. Apparently you haven’t noticed, but you’re terrifying when you fight.”</p><p>“If I told you to piss off?” she presses. He closes his eyes and fights the urge to press his palms against them. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t - the last thing he fucking wants is to piss off and leave her. Where will she go? Chouji? They’re good friends, but Chouji’s never understood the way she thinks. Not the way Shikamaru does. Which is fine, he doesn’t need to, he understands enough to be there for her but that's not the same as understanding <em>her</em>. There's a reason she comes to Shikamaru when she has problems she needs to work out how to solve, and if <em>Shikamaru's</em> the problem then where the hell is she meant to go.</p><p>“If you told me to piss off,” he grits out, “then I’d go.” There are more selfish reasons why he'd rather stay, but he doesn't want to admit to them.</p><p>Her hands tighten on his shoulders again. He didn’t notice when but his grip on her has turned unyielding, and he makes a conscious effort to relax his fingers.</p><p>“And stay gone?” she insists.</p><p><em>No</em>, he thinks. <em>Don’t make me. </em>He’d swear never to think about her like that again. She can wear his clothes all she wants, he’ll keep his thoughts quiet and look away. She can spar and he’ll fight her and he won’t let himself get distracted by the sweat that runs down to the hollow of her throat; they can get ice cream as friends and he’ll be completely unaffected when she smiles.</p><p>He won’t be. He can’t be. She doesn’t care about that.</p><p>“I’ll stay gone,” he promises, and he means it. It feels like it hurts to say it. It feels like it'll hurt worse to do.</p><p>There’s a pause. He doesn’t open his eyes.</p><p>Where will <em>he</em> go, he thinks despairingly. Chouji’s never understood the way either them think.</p><p>“Drama queen,” she huffs, and flops back against him with an audible pout. “I want you to kiss me. Ok? It’s just kissing. I told you not to make it weird.”</p><p>His eyes snap open. He stares at her, disbelieving, and she looks awkwardly away.</p><p>“So,” she continues, as though this were a normal conversation. “Stop making it weird. No one likes weird. <em>I’ll stay gone</em>, seriously, who does that.”</p><p>“What,” he manages. It’s not really a question.</p><p>“I was just asking,” she says defensively. “Consent’s important. Yes only means something if no means something, otherwise you’re just pretending to respect people’s opinions.”</p><p>There is something deeper in that, he knows. It goes back to the way she didn’t want to be a ninja but thought she had to be, the way she spent years by herself afraid of what people would do if she didn’t play along. At least some of it, he knows, goes back to the way her brother tried to rewrite her mind when he didn’t like the person she’d turned out to be.</p><p>He knows this, but just at the moment, his brain is caught up on other things. “You wanted to know if I’d stop if you told me to,” he says, still not sure he’s following what’s going on, “And so you kissed me first and then didn’t give me an answer when I checked if you wanted it, and then got angry at me when I wouldn’t keep kissing you until I knew for sure that it was ok?”</p><p>“I wasn’t <em>angry</em> at you,” she protests. “It was a spirited debate. Are you going to kiss me or not?” And, to punctuate that question, she rolls her hips back against him; with where she’s ended up sitting it produces a devastating effect and Shikamaru bites his tongue to stop himself reacting.</p><p>“You’re impossible,” he tells her.</p><p>“Hush. You love me.”</p><p>God help him, he does.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Sasuke and Spite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hallowtide asked for Itachi discovering that Sasuke had committed suicide. Follows canon up until Orochimaru attacks during the chunin exams in chapter 24.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(hi there is no sweet and sasuke does not walk away from this one, i let you know because i usually try to give you at least something hopeful but nope this is thorns all the way down)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Let's see. Moving away from the Sasuke in ROOT timeline, because Itachi won't believe that Sasuke's dead unless he has irrefutable proof. So for a oneshot in a separate timeline, let's... let's make Itachi hurt. I get the feeling that's the point of this ficlet, and the way to do that is for Sasuke to be scared. She's survived the chunin exams, barely, and there's blood under her eye from where Orochimaru tried to take it. No - she hasn't survived the chunin exams, they're not even over yet. We'll split right at the end of chapter 24; in the original, Sasuke slumped, defeated, in Gaara's sand, and said fuck it. Fuck it. She didn't care. She wanted to talk about gardens, and sand, and she didn't want to be a ninja, and Orochimaru could be waiting for her on the other side of Gaara's shield and that was fine because she didn't <em>care</em>.</p><p>In this, she twists away from the sand and out of its reach, desperation pushing her faster, uncaring of the damage she does to herself as she demands more from her muscles than they can easily give. She skims underneath the seal flaring at Orochimaru's fingertips and reaches blindly for the next thing to kawarimi with, then the next, then again, again again again she runs and she leaves Gaara behind but she doesn't have time to stop because her eye, Orochimaru was going to take her <em>eye</em> and Itachi wasn't meant to let this happen but Itachi wasn't <em>there</em> and -</p><p>Kakashi was meant to keep her safe in Konoha, but Kakashi didn't. She was meant to be able to wait until Itachi came to her but she can't, so the only option left is to go to him. She doesn't know where he is. She doesn't know what else to do. She does it anyway. Konoha's security is not the greatest at the best of times, and now it's distracted by the bijuu-sannin showdown in the forest; Gaara has never had anyone scream for him in panic before, nor has he ever had anyone take a blow in his place because they didn't want him hurt. The fact that that person disappeared shortly after, a flash of fear so ugly and pained that even Mother recoiled from the taste, then nothing? He's barely stable to begin with. This is not a situation that was going to go well for him. Him, Orochimaru, Team Seven and the dogs - what little was left of Sasuke's trail is impossible to track after Shukaku comes out to play, but they know, at least, that she's alive and she ran and she got away.</p><p>She got away. Kakashi holds onto this. She got away. She didn't come back, she hasn't been found, but she got away. She has to have got away.</p><p>And... she did. Away from Orochimaru. Away from Konoha, where Orochimaru stays; he's put too much work into his invasion to abandon it chasing after the potential of a sharingan. Away from Danzo, who sneers at the incompetency in letting the last Uchiha escape and regrets that he didn't decide to step in earlier but who, ultimately, has no better luck tracking her down than Kakashi does. She got away, and she stays away, and Konoha won't see her again.</p><p>When she finds Itachi she's thin. Stress, maybe, but also the fact that she isn't suited to being a missing nin. She wasn't suited to being a ninja either, let's face it. It's not long, she doesn't have to survive by herself for long, maybe a month? It's long enough. Konoha tries to keep her disappearance quiet - who wants to admit they lost a clan heir from an exam held in their own village? - but when Itachi learns she's gone, he makes an offhand mention of the nine tails being vulnerable, of the wake of Orochimaru's invasion being an opportunity they would be unwise to miss, of Naruto being too strong to be allowed to grow stronger and if they're to collect his bijuu it makes more sense to do it while he's young. He and Kisame are sent to retrieve him, and if Itachi has his own plans, then what of it? Clan business is not Akatsuki's business.</p><p>(It makes more sense to collect Naruto's bijuu when he's young, as if his age can stop him. He is young but Kurama is not, and Kakashi says that Sasuke got away but when did that make it ok? Sasuke, Naruto knows, is not made to be alone. If this story is made of thorns then there are fractures here we can dig into, old wounds and old betrayals we can pry open to make them bleed - Naruto learnt in the academy that not all teachers could be trusted, and what has Kakashi done to prove him wrong? Naruto has a team and Kakashi tried to take Sasuke off it, Naruto has a nindo and failing to rescue Sasuke after she ran from Orochimaru is not part of it, Naruto has a desperate need to be seen and acknowledged and <i>Sasuke</i> was the one who accepted him, who needed him back, you saw how far he went for a Sasuke that said he hated him so how can you ask him to sit back and do nothing when this Sasuke is the one that ran away?</p><p>(If this story is made of thorns then there are fractures here that could split open, aching and desperate and distrustful, and Itachi looks at the way Naruto pulls on Kurama, at the way he forces Shukaku back under a sea of orange and molten glass, at the way he turns to Orochimaru with claws and tails and a cloak of red arching over him and making him untouchable - Itachi looks at the way Naruto crumbles, and mistakes it for strength. What does that say about Itachi, what does it say about Naruto, what does it mean for Konoha that their greatest weapon looks at the way they try to cover up Sasuke's loss and grits his teeth until his canines drop to fangs and doesn't think they're doing enough?)</p><p>But: Sasuke. She's thin. Lost fat, lost muscle mass. She didn't have that much to lose. She hunches, trying to make herself look smaller, and she's already too short to start. Frail. Is that right? She looks frail. <em>Weak.</em> When she finds Itachi she's relieved, and it makes her slow. She blinks up at him and says, "Aniki, I need help," and she doesn't look away because she trusts him, and he catches her in Tsukuyomi and thinks <em>how am I meant to help you from this.</em></p><p>This is how: "Be stronger," he says. "Hate me," he orders. "You must avenge the clan," he tells her. "You must not be so <em>weak</em>," and he does what he has to to make the message stick, to give her no other choice, to <em>force</em> her to grow until she can protect herself because he doesn't know what else to do. That's important. He doesn't know. He thinks it will work. He's trying to do what she asked. He can't look at her because - because how can he? He dedicated his <em>life</em> to Sasuke, and here she is and she's doing so badly, how can you ask him to look at her without doubting that what he's done is right?</p><p>He doesn't have time to doubt. He doesn't look at her. He has to believe that he's helping her, because if he's wrong now then he was wrong five years ago, and what makes you think he's strong enough to cope with that?</p><p>"You are still not worthy of death," he tells her, and he leaves her there, and he thought it would help.</p><p>When he's gone, he takes everything with him. Every plan. Every hope. Every bit of optimism and strength and will to carry on. Curled up on the floor and hurting, Sasuke has nothing left because he took everything with him, and she could easily stay there and never get up again, but please. <em>Please</em>.</p><p>Fuck it, she says, teeth bared and bloody from where she bit her lip clean through, throat hoarse from the screams that - in the real world - she didn't make. "<em>Fuck it.</em>" She laughs, bitter, hateful, and she pulls herself to her elbows and she snarls, "I love you. You don't get to walk away. You don't get to <em>leave</em>, I'm the most important person in your life and <em>I</em> decide what I'm worthy of and <em>you don't get to leave me.</em>"</p><p>There is always something left. Spite is a hell of a motivator. She still has the knowledge that he loves her. She still knows that he did everything for her, she still knows that she's his only weakness, and if he won't keep her safe? Fuck it. Fuck <em>him</em>. He hurt her, but she knows how to hurt him back, and if the only weapon she has is her life then she'll wield it and damn the consequences, does she look like someone who thinks things through when she's angry?</p><p>Maybe she is. Maybe she does, enough at least to get the maximum effect for what she's trying to do, and she leaves a trail of evidence for after she's found that will take the knife and twist it. For Itachi. For everyone. Why not. You don't go out in a blaze of glory and worry about the bystanders getting caught in the flames. All the secrets of the massacre, all the ways she tried to protect him; she blows the whistle on Danzo, on the Sandaime, on Itachi on her parents on the coup. Let everyone know the dirty truth, let them see what she's been hiding and <em>hurt</em> from it, you want her to avenge the clan? She'll burn its reputation to the ground and take Konoha down with her. And, woven in among that, just for Itachi: did you know I still sleep with the weasel plushie Shisui got me? Did you know I still wear your old clothes? Did you know I took our mother's hair pins and use them to clip back my fringe, did you know I saved the fish and talked to them when I was sad?</p><p>Did you know I was falling apart and I needed you, did you know what it cost me to come to you for help? Did you know what you did when you turned me away? Now you do. Now you know. Now I'm dead and now I'm gone and now it's too late for you do anything about your mistakes, now you <em>know</em> and I hope you choke on it you fucking bastard, now you fucking <em>know</em>.</p><p>Now he knows.</p><p>Death is not something you have to be worthy of. There's nothing noble in it. You are not a hero if you die for a cause, you are not weak if you run from it and fight to survive. You do not fail if you have to ask for help.</p><p>She grins. Blood on her teeth. She took out her eyes and crushed them so no one could take them from her. She threw herself in the river. She looks like Shisui. She looks like Sasuke. She looks like Itachi's little brother, broken and bloody and lost, he was doing the best he could and he didn't know what else there was and he thought, he honestly thought it would help.</p><p>He loved her. He would have died for her. He built his life around her. She tore it down around him, she died for him, she loved him back and look what it did to them both.</p><p>Like going up stairs and miscounting, you stumble at the top. Like falling in a dream, your heart stops beating but it doesn't restart when you wake up. Like waiting for the world to make sense because your brain freewheels and doesn't understand, like a moment stretched out that's tipping over the edge and you keep on tipping and never go over it, like the way your throat goes thin and you can't seem to breathe and it's the weight before the illness that never goes away.</p><p>What is he meant to do. How is he meant to react to this? Is he meant to be sad, is he allowed to be angry - every step was designed to hurt him, targeted with vicious precision that even now a part of him can't help but approve of, and how is it fair that someone can accuse you of so much and then just walk away and never give you chance to respond? Walk away - <em>die</em>, she's dead, she's dead and dead and dead and what's the meaning of life, Itachi asked when he was five years old and the world looked too bleak to bother with, what's the meaning of life and the world gave him a little brother and the meaning of life, apparently, is to hurt and -</p><p>That's not Itachi. Is it? That's not the way he thinks. That's not the way he allows himself to think.</p><p>"My apologies," he says, bowing his head, face kept blank, eyes dead and if there's a scream gouging holes in his chest, then he's the only one that hears it. "I did not intend for my cover to be blown so soon, Hokage-sama."</p><p>What's the meaning of life, Itachi asked when he was five years old, and Orochimaru said, None.</p><p>(he didn't know what else to do. he loves her. he was honestly trying to help.)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Between scenes: Sakura</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam wanted to know if Sakura actually set out to fix everything, or if that was Sasuke projecting. Takes place between chapter 25 and chapter 26, this one lines up with canon (but you don't need to read it to follow the main story if you'd rather).</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“And when Naruto’s Hokage,” Sasuke says, frowning in a way that says he knows that what he’s saying is overly simplistic but he’s going to say it anyway, “We’ll make him put us on the council and we’ll fix it. And they’ll have to listen to us, because I’ll be a clan head and you’ll be the strongest person in the village, and if you want a sword I think Kakashi-sensei uses a sword so he can teach you, and we’ll make it <em>better</em>.”</p><p>Sakura can't help but smile at the image, even as she gently teases him for his reasoning. There's a solidity to it, a sense of permanence that's comforting, even if it sounds like the sort of childish dream that you leave behind as you grow up.</p><p>“I’ll make chunin,” she says a few sentences later, more because it seems like what the conversation calls for that because she means it, “And when Naruto’s Hokage you’ll be there to change the world with us. It’s a deal.”</p><p>And… that’s it. They move on. Sasuke fusses about her hair, she lets him work out the tangles and redo it, and just for a bit, the outside world fades away. Sasuke is an Uchiha and someone’s trying to take his eyes; all of them are genin in an exam that kills people. They are also people who are tired but who are still alive, who are not actively being attacked, who are being taught how to braid their hair without a tie because they lost theirs somewhere along the way.</p><p>If Sakura were the sort to care about fairness, she’d say it was unfair. They’re only alive because they were lucky. <em>Lucky.</em> That doesn’t make it ok. Hell, Sasuke’s whole life has been so far from ok that she isn’t even sure sometimes if he knows what ok <em>is </em>- but, even aside from that. Fix it, Sasuke said, but fix what? A lot of things are wrong. They’re wrong in so many ways that need fixing, and obviously, clearly, without question or doubt, if she knows what needs doing and she cares then she’s going to fix it, right? Obviously. That's what you do when things are unfair. That's what Sasuke so easily assumed she was going to do.</p><p>She’s not the sort to care about fairness. You don’t blame the seasons for a bad winter that doubles the price of rice. Who looked at a daimyo and imagined that they could ever be a princess? Little kids. Fair - no, it wasn’t. And? Why should it be? Why should you ever look at the world and expect it to cater to you, what kind of sheltered life did you have to have led to get upset when you learnt that it didn’t?</p><p>She’s restless. Sasuke nearly <em>died.</em> She thought he’d died. She thought she’d failed. Not just Sasuke; Shikamaru nearly died, Chouji, if any of them had missed a step while fighting those damn clones -</p><p>Team Eight were probably dead. Dead or as good as. She can’t think of any other reason the village would keep them secret. A sannin infiltrating your village looked bad on the surface, but being in possession of bloodlines so valuable that even foreign kages would stoop so low to get their hands on them? That was a brag and a half. If Team Eight had survived, they’d be paraded in front of the crowd. Even our genin can face down another village’s strongest member and walk away to keep fighting, even our <em>genin</em> know better than to give up when the village’s honour is on the line.</p><p>Even our genin.</p><p>When Naruto’s Hokage, Sasuke had said, like it was a foregone conclusion. Sakura wasn’t even sure that Naruto still wanted to be. He hadn’t mentioned it in a while. Not since Wave. Maybe he was just being quiet about it.</p><p>When Naruto’s Hokage, you’ll be the strongest person in the village, and we’ll fix it.</p><p>Big dreams for little genin who nearly died in the forest. Sasuke seems to think Sakura’s a lot more altruistic than she is, because all she’d said was that when she was a kid, she wanted to be a ninja so she could be rich and popular and in control. Fixing the clan system was never on the cards. You may as well scream at the sky for raining; what could one civilian do against the clans? Being on the <em>council -</em> her? She’d screwed up being team leader badly enough to nearly lose her team, and Sasuke wanted to give her a village and ask her to make it <em>better?</em></p><p>She shifts on the ledge she’s keeping watch from and gives herself a moment - a <em>moment</em>, she’s human too, she’s allowed to be unsure even if it feels like everyone’s relying on her to be strong - to despair. It can’t be done. How the hell - she doesn’t have the faintest idea about politics. What made Sasuke think <em>she</em> was the one who should do it? Why does he think she can do anything? It feels like the same mad faith that made him push her to be team leader back before Team Seven had even formed. She went along with it then because she was too taken by the idea of him believing in her to say no, but honestly? Even with hindsight, she can't say she sees what he saw.</p><p>Sometimes, when she messes things up and gets scared and snaps and has to apologise, she wonders where Sasuke’s faith in her came from. It’s terrifying. Humbling. Sasuke trusts her like it’s a fact of life, and she has no idea why.</p><p>But; she only gives herself a moment. It doesn’t matter why. She’s the team leader, and her team are relying on her to keep them alive, and so she will. To the best of her abilities. And if her abilities aren’t enough, then she’ll keep improving them until they are, it’s as simple as that. It’s not like she started out being anything other than a silly little girl with a crush and Sasuke trusted her then, and even if she struggles to see it in herself, that doesn't change the fact that maybe, he was right to.</p><p>Maybe, when people aren’t nearly dying, she does a lot better than she ever thought she would, and maybe part of that is because someone looked at her and told her she could.</p><p>Someone. Sasuke. He thinks she’s the sort of person to see inequality and want to fix it. He thinks she’s the sort of person to see how the world is unfair and call it out for being wrong. He thinks she's a leader, and that her dreams are for all the people starting from the same place as her who weren’t lucky enough to make it through.</p><p>It’s not how she ever thought of herself, if she’s honest. She’s not big on dreams. She just. Gets on with things.</p><p>“Alright,” she breathes, resettling herself into her skin. Whatever she does, the next step is to pass the chunin exams. Behind that, always, is to keep her team alive; all she’s done is add in a picture of where all that living will lead to. Naruto as Hokage, if he wants to be. Sasuke on the council as the Uchiha clan head. Her standing with them as the strongest ninja in the village.</p><p>Well. Maybe not that last one; there’s having faith in yourself because someone else does, and there’s setting unrealistic goals in life. She’ll be as strong as she gets, and as long as that’s enough to flatten her enemies, she doesn’t really care about where in the village she ranks.</p><p>“Alright.” She didn't think she could be a team leader, but she's learning. She can add politics to the list. And if she can’t fix the village herself, she can find people who can and marshall them into the right places to achieve what needs to be done. In the interim, she can keep going, and she can make sure the others are there to keep going with her, and when she stumbles and snaps and struggles she can apologise and pick herself back up and do <em>better</em>.</p><p>“Alright?” Shikamaru asks, raising an eyebrow from where he’s keeping watch next to her. Below them, teams are swarming round the tower, desperate for their missing scrolls. The redhead with the blood-hungry killing intent has just left the treeline with his team, and there’s a lazy intent in the way he approaches that Sakura keeps a wary eye on.</p><p>“New life plan,” she tells him. “Apparently I’m going to change the world.”</p><p>He snorts and turns back to the field. “Good luck,” he says. “It’s in need of it.”</p><p>She could let herself be disheartened by his almost resigned cynicism, but she could also not, and she just nods in agreement and resumes her watch.</p><p>Below them, Gaara kills four people, and doesn’t even bother to collect the scrolls. They decide as a pair that they’ve seen enough, and walk down the walls until they reach the window ledge outside the room the others are discussing the tower’s food supplies in.</p><p>Of course they are. Chouji’s burning calories fighting off the poison and Sasuke’s Sasuke, what else would they be talking about.</p><p>Sasuke’s Sasuke. Childish and simplistic, except he’s not actually that childish. Just because something is simple doesn’t make it wrong, any more than something being complicated makes it right. Complicated things are only right because you can't see the contradictions; simple things are only wrong because people assume that if that were the answer, someone would've done it already.</p><p>She could get lost following that thread and wondering who else had tried to fix Konoha and what had happened to them. She could get lost doubting if she'd be any better or if there was any point in bothering to try, but she doesn't. Sasuke thinks she can. To the best of her abilities, she will.</p><p>“Second floor’s out,” she says as she drops into the room. “Sorry Chouji. The team from Suna just arrived.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Sasuke in Suna: Sasori</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>TheEdifier said they'd totally love to see a medical revolution alongside an industrial one, and since Sasuke's already bringing the industrial revolution to Suna, she'd probably give the medical one a go.</p><p>Starting with: ninja play with blades for a living and can literally make an entire fake body and control it with chakra strings, where the hell are all the prosthetics?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sasori comes to Suna eventually. Comes to Suna, comes back to Suna - either way. He’s after the Ichibi, and with Deidara wheeling overhead on one of his giant clay birds, he doesn’t plan to fail.</p><p>Why should he? Suna’s strength is in its puppets, but Suna’s stomach is too weak to understand the full potential of what puppets can do. The Kazekage’s son, he understands, is a puppeteer; his is made of wood and metal, he only has the one, and from what Sasori has heard it spends most of its time being repaired. Losing against a pair of cats and a trade advisor, of all things - is this what Suna’s strength has come to?</p><p>Even the Ichibi himself is a disappointment. Wild and uncontrollable as he was - his container was - as a child, at least then he was <em>dangerous</em>. A credible threat, even if it was as much to his own people as to his enemies. But now all that anger and hatred has been tamed, and the Ichibi is little more than another paper pusher in a village of glass-makers.</p><p>It’s a waste. A shame.</p><p>But there are other things to come back to Suna for, and Sasori sends Deidara ahead to collect the Ichibi while he takes his leave to deal with them. He isn’t nostalgic, and there’s nothing emotional in the way he seeks out some of his old haunts - he cut out his emotions when he cut out his heart and replaced it with mechanics and springs - but it’s private nonetheless, and he doesn’t expect to be bothered. Deidara knows better by now than to expect backup when Sasori is busy.</p><p>It’s not Deidara though that interrupts him. It’s a sand cat, small, with a flat face and large ears that make it look vaguely kittenish. They aren’t uncommon in the desert, though they rarely venture so close to the village, and if it wasn’t for the metal puppet-joint it was doggedly carrying, Sasori would dismiss it.</p><p>The joint looks like it would have been part of a spine, once. It’s badly chewed. It also has a chakra string attached to it, stretching back towards Suna.</p><p>The cat pauses when it notices him, then drops the vertebrae on the floor, takes two deliberate steps to the side, and <em>mrows</em> demandingly.</p><p>“I have nothing for you,” Sasori tells it, intrigued despite himself. A summon, perhaps? A nincat? He’s never tried making puppets of animals before. He’s never much seen the point.</p><p>The cat huffs at him and mrows again, and this time there’s a reaction: a faint pulse of chakra down the chakra string to the vertebrae, and it’s replaced by a kunoichi. Short, too pale to be from Suna, and exasperated to the point of irritated, but what immediately draws Sasori’s attention are the spinning red eyes and the ripple of muscle over her slight frame.</p><p>She’d make an excellent puppet. Fast, flexible - puppets could bend in ways people couldn’t, but it was so <em>annoying</em> to continually repair the flesh housing when it was bent further than it could go. This one though, it could be beautiful, and if those eyes were what he thought… Could he incorporate that? Maybe. A puppet’s mind was only as good as its wielder’s, it wouldn’t matter what she could see when she was dead, but if the boost to her reaction time bypassed the brain and went straight to the reflexes... </p><p>“Make it snappy,” she’s telling the cat. “We’re kind of in the middle of - oh. Sasori.”</p><p>She pauses, assessing him, and the sand cat preens and winds its way around her feet. Out of politeness, Sasori lets her take her time. He probably can’t use her eyes, he decides, but they aren’t what he’s interested in anyway.</p><p>“Ok, look,” she finally says, dropping out of her ready position. Unwise. With her eyes and looks she doesn’t appear to be a Suna kunoichi - if she is, then she’s foreign-born and also not wearing a headband - but it’s yet another mark of how Suna’s recent softness has affected it. If Sasori were the sort to scoff he’d scoff; instead he’s the sort to start weaving a cautious net of chakra around her, testing how close he can get before she notices.</p><p>“I’m a bit tied up for now - thank you for Deidara by the way, he’s an absolute delight - but are you free this afternoon? I’ve got a proposal for you, and if you could refrain from killing anyone in the interim it would really help my case when I pitch it to the kazekage.”</p><p>Close, is the answer. Even when his chakra’s hovering a scant finger-width above her skin she doesn’t notice the danger she’s in, though the sand cat flattens its ears against its skull and hisses. She has a chakra thread leading back towards Suna, in exactly the same direction as the thread from the cat’s vertebrae had gone, though Sasori isn’t sure what the purpose of it is. He’s heard of summons being able to reverse summon their contracts to themselves, and any person who’d signed the contract along with them, but it’s a rare talent and not one that explains why the thread is there.</p><p>He’d almost think she’d travelled down it, if that wasn’t so far out of the realm of possible to be worth considering.</p><p>“This afternoon?” she presses. “I have an office, but my garden has roses. I can bring it to you if you rather, I’m not fussy.” That’s a lie, based on the way she glances round the abandoned workshop he’d been collecting old prototypes from and wrinkles her nose.</p><p>The sand cat lashes its tail in disgust at the room and leaps for her waist, sinking its claws into the loose folds of her skirt and climbing laboriously to her shoulder.</p><p>“I am free this afternoon,” Sasori decides. Whatever else Deidara is, he’s good at travelling long distances at speed; he can easily draw Suna’s guard away for long enough that Sasori can take his time. “You, however, will not be.” He tightens the net of chakra strings around the kunoichi, and releases a gas-based poison into the atmosphere. It interferes with the electrical signals in the nervous system, not enough to cause permanent damage - rewiring a puppet is tedious when there’s perfectly usable circuitry already in place - but enough to cause a person's heart to skip its beats and stop.</p><p>A person's flesh heart, that is. If Sasori’s own were weak enough to be affected by poison, he’d simply upgrade it.</p><p>The kunoichi grimaces. “God, tell me about it,” she complains. “Fucking <em>paperwork.</em>” She does not clutch her chest or fall to her knees, short of breath from the heart attack that should be imminent. “But Sasuke,” she says, shifting her voice to a mocking falsetto, “You can just look at anything and memorise it perfectly, you’ll get it done in no time - bitch, do I <em>look</em> like a damn photocopier? I’m not trying to memorise the trade agreements, I’m trying not to get conned by them. Speaking of.” She raises a hand and points accusingly; as it moves, Sasori can just see a faint glimmer of chakra over it. A poison barrier. Now that he knows to look for it, he can see it covering her entire body, including the cat draped around her neck. “If you kill me, I can’t give you the prosthetics division in the new hospital I’m building. Don’t kill me, dumbass. It’s a shit way to start a job interview.”</p><p>Sasori… hesitates. He is aware, individually, of the meanings of most of the words she has just said. Photocopier eludes him. He gathers, though, that she is the mysterious trade advisor who’s been pushing Suna to softness and ruin, and despite himself he’s intrigued.</p><p>“A job interview works both ways,” he says. “Dying before you can complete it gives a poor impression of your worth as an employer.”</p><p>“Fair. Fine. Three o’ clock, rose garden; don’t be late.” She shakes herself, somehow sliding out of the strings of the chakra net he’d woven around her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to a boy about an explosion and remind him that I saw Gaara first. Ciao.”</p><p>And with that, she disappears. The chewed puppet vertebrae clatters to the ground where she’d been standing and she - and her summon - are nowhere to be seen.</p><p>Three o’clock is almost four hours away. Combing the entire village for a rose garden will be boring; waiting for her to arrive will be worse. Sasori is not known for his patience.</p><p>“Prosthetic division,” he murmurs, bending to retrieve the puppet joint. It still has a chakra string leading off it; this close, he can tell how it moves, no doubt following the kunoichi as she ‘reminds’ Deidara of her ownership of the Ichibi. Currently, it appears to be angled steeply enough up in the air that he suspects she’s stolen his bird.</p><p>Perhaps he was too harsh on the Kazekage’s son. Losing to a trade advisor and a pair of cats; he will have to see how she fights before he can call anyone a fool for losing to her. If she does well… A puppet’s mind is only as good as its wielder's. If she passes her job interview, he may have to allow her to keep hers intact.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(have you watched kingsman the secret service if you have then <i>gazelle</i>)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Same no Sasuke: Naruto</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rising Fandoms asked for Sasuke from the ROOT series in elaborate kimono and someone from Konoha reacting to her and Kisame, and a couple of comments on the latest chapter of the main fic (29 if you're reading this in the future) were making SasuNaru noises, so this combines the two. Ish. More pre-shipping than shipping, but definitely starting down a shipping route if this universe continues.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Back in chapter 10 the Sasuke in ROOT series split in two. One half looped back to connect to chapter 1, the other half branched off into a new AU. For clarity I'm calling that new AU Same no Sasuke / Sasuke of the sharks, and this follows on from chapter 10 (sharks) but ignores chapters 1 (the original ficlet) and 7 (kakashi).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>Naruto?</em>” the girl says, and Naruto pauses with his chopsticks half way to his mouth and squints at her. He hasn’t been back to the land of Snow since that one mission with the actress who turned out to be a princess, and it’s not impossible that the unfamiliar girl is someone he met then, but. He doesn’t think she is? He doesn’t recognise her. From her expression though she recognises him, and he pastes a goofy smile over his face to cover his awkwardness.</p><p>“That’s me! Hey, it’s been a while. What’ve you been up to?”</p><p>School of Jiraiya 101: people underestimate idiots. Actually, school of Jiraiya 101 would be <em>never pass up the opportunity to talk to a pretty lady</em>, but Naruto tends to ignore that part.</p><p>“Really?” she asks, rolling her eyes. “Allow me to spill my secrets to you and hand you the key to tracking me down. <em>What’ve you been up to,</em> honestly. You aren’t subtle.”</p><p>“Worth a shot,” he says, still grinning, but it appears to have done its job. The tenseness the girl’s shoulders had when she first saw him has bled out into a lazy calm, and she slides into the seat next to him without any hesitance. Plus, from her answer he’s gathered that she’s not an ally, though she seems too casual to be an enemy. A convicted criminal on the run from the law, but actually a good person underneath? Not an enemy herself, but loyal to one and therefore not meant to be his friend? He’s made connections with stranger people, but not too many that fit that specific profile, and he stays discrete as he examines her and tries to place who she is.</p><p>She’s short, fair skinned, dark hair half pulled back in a braid. That’s notable. Braids aren’t common; Sakura wears them, and there’s the odd person with an old fashioned queue around, but it’s not a popular style. Blue silk kimono patterned with koi fish, and it doesn’t appear to be heavily modified to fight in, though there’s a layer of white fleece just visible at the collar so it has at least been adapted for warmth. Dark eyes, delicate features, and he doesn’t <em>recognise</em> her but there’s something he swears is familiar in her face.</p><p>The way she’s raising an eyebrow at him and looking unimpressed, for example. “Take a picture,” she says dryly. “It’ll last longer. Actually no, don’t do that. That would be creepy.”</p><p>“Ah, sorry,” he says, shaking off his odd instinctive reaction to insult her. <em>Bastard?</em> In what universe would his first thought for a girl like her be to call her bastard? This one, clearly, but what the hell.</p><p>“You realise there’s no way this is a coincidence,” she continues, producing a pair of chopsticks from seemingly nowhere and stealing the egg off his ramen. He blinks, taken aback, but the whole experience is leaving him too far off kilter to protest. “You just <em>happen</em> to be in the same nowhere town as us, we just <em>happen</em> to come across each other when the others are off doing something else, seriously? This isn’t even a good trap. I’m offended.”</p><p>“Hey, I’m not trying to trap you,” he says, frowning. “I’d do something a lot better than this if I was, believe it.” But <em>why</em> is she so familiar?</p><p>She waves him off and targets a beansprout next, and he shields his bowl with the beginnings of irritation. “Not you then. Jiraiya. We’re not hunting you this time so he must be hunting us.” She blinks, then tilts her head at him and scrunches her nose. “If he’s trying to weaponise therapy no jutsu it won’t work. I’m therapied. Konoha can suck it, I’m not going back.”</p><p><em>Konoha</em> can suck it? Not going <em>back</em>? That… really doesn’t leave a lot of people she could be. Does it leave anyone? Can someone <em>please</em> explain to Naruto where he knows her from, because he kind of feels like he’s missing something really big here.</p><p>“You’re not hunting us?” he repeats, and some of his confusion must show in his tone because she pauses her food-thievery attempts to stare at him.</p><p>“Not ‘us’. You,” she clarifies. “You specifically. Uzumaki Naruto. You do know we’re hunting you, right? Not now, but. In general. You have to know. Why don’t you know. Holy fuck, you don’t know.”</p><p>She blinks again, bewilderment leaching into a bristling sort of anger that’d almost seem <em>protective </em>if that wasn’t so - “Sasuke,” he breathes, eyes wide. She ignores him, too busy pouring his glass of water out on the table to make a puddle and poking at it, but now that he’s seen it he can’t not. “<em>Sasuke.</em>”</p><p>“What? Hang on. Kisame. Kisame, I know you’re there. Kisame. Pick up the puddle-phone.”</p><p>“<em>It’s not a puddle-phone, brat. What do you need?</em>”</p><p>“Sasuke,” Naruto repeats urgently, brain still stuck on - he thought Sasuke was <em>dead.</em> He thought Sasuke was a boy, but that’s a less important issue. </p><p>Though the blue-tinged face that swims into view in the water, that’s potentially a more important one, and Naruto holds himself suddenly very still. Kisame. Uchiha Itachi’s old partner in Akatsuki, before Itachi disappeared. There were rumours Itachi’d died, but there were also rumours that Kisame had a new Uchiha to travel with, so rumours couldn’t always be trusted.</p><p>Though, hell, if Sasuke’s calling Kisame then maybe -</p><p>“Naruto doesn’t know Akatsuki’s after the kyuubi,” Sasuke says matter of factly. “How’s he meant to narrowly escape us if he doesn’t know we’re chasing him? It’s ridiculous.”</p><p>“<em>You do remember that he’s not meant to escape at all?</em>”</p><p>“But <em>Kisame.</em>”</p><p>Kisame huffs, but from what Naruto can tell he doesn’t seem that annoyed. “<em>I’m coming. Where are you?</em>”</p><p>“Ramen stand. He got pork. Rude. See you in a sec.”</p><p>The puddle flickers blank again, and she goes straight back to filching the non-meat toppings from Naruto’s lunch. He lets her. He feels too sick to stop her, and with Kisame on the way, he really should be running, but. <em>Sasuke.</em></p><p>“You’re with Akatsuki,” he says. <em>You’re alive,</em> he wants to say, but something about the words stick in his throat. And - Akatsuki. <em>Akatsuki.</em> He doesn’t know what he - betrayal? Guilt? Akatsuki are the very definition of the enemy, he can’t believe Sasuke would be among the people trying to kill him for his bijuu. But at the same time, he <em>can’t believe</em> it. Maybe he didn’t know Sasuke as well as he should’ve done, maybe there were things Sasuke was struggling with that Naruto didn’t understand - she was struggling with - hell, maybe he doesn’t even know what <em>gender</em> Sasuke is, but he knew - <em>knows</em> - Sasuke well enough to see that this doesn’t make sense.</p><p>He remembers, with startling clarity, Sasuke hunching over himself in the river and describing how his brother drowned him but it didn’t stick. What the hell happened to send Sasuke to Akatsuki, to Itachi, what the hell happened to Sasuke after they thought he’d died?</p><p>“Yes?” Sasuke says. “I have been for three years, but thank you for noticing.”</p><p>“Three <em>years.</em>” Itachi vanished ten months ago. There were some reports before then of Itachi and Kisame having taken an apprentice, one that travelled with them but rarely joined them on actual missions, but Jiraiya had never been able to get much information on them. Naruto frowns though, because, “Three years. But it’s been four since you -” died “- left?”</p><p>Sasuke pauses, the stack of pork slices she’s pushing to the rim of the bowl listing dangerously to the left. “Um,” she says. “Well, yeah. I spent a year with Danzo getting my brain scrambled. Oh -” and, completely ignoring the bomb she’s just dropped on Naruto, she perks up. “What were people’s reactions to us killing him? Did you like the eyes? That was me. Itachi did the crows, and we put the actual eyes back in the shrine where they belonged and burnt them, but I had to do <em>something</em>.”</p><p>The eyes. The - god, the <em>eyes.</em> Danzo’s corpse had been left pinned to the Sandaime’s face on the Hokage monument, displayed in a way that couldn’t be missed with crows picking over his remains. His arm had been stretched out, every socket left bloody and raw with a single red mochi held in each one by a dango stick.</p><p>No one had been able to explain it. Tsunade had pushed the investigation through, and her anger at the fact that her grandfather’s grave had been raided to give Danzo access to the mokuton had paved the way for her to dismantle the small council and start the arduous process of fixing the corruption Danzo had brought in - but. Eyes. The sharingan. The fact that Sasuke came back with the brother that drowned him to take revenge against Danzo, the fact that he - that <em>she</em> - used <em>mochi and dango sticks,</em> Naruto doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or if he wants to cry and instead all he feels is desperately despairingly <em>sick -</em></p><p>“Hey,” she says, leaning forwards in alarm. “No, don’t do that. Why are you doing that. Stop. I’m sorry, I thought the mochi were funny. I won’t do it again.”</p><p>Naruto shakes his head, not trusting his voice to speak, and slides off his stool to grab her in a rough hug. He doesn’t even care that he didn’t give her enough warning and makes her tense up from it, or that if she could kill Danzo she could probably kill him, he just. He thought she was dead. He thought she killed herself, he thought she was <em>dead.</em> “You shouldn’t have had to,” he says around the roughness in his throat. A year getting her <em>brain</em> scrambled. “We shouldn’t have let it happen, we should’ve - god, Sasuke. I’m sorry. I should’ve been there. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>She holds herself still, then, slowly, but lacking the unsure hesitance she would’ve shown before, she relaxes. She doesn’t hug him back but she shifts so she’s more comfortably in his hold and lifts a hand to bury her fingers in the front of his jacket.</p><p>“You didn’t know,” she says, quietly. “It was shit, but it wasn’t your fault.”</p><p>“That’s not the point,” he insists. “It doesn’t matter who’s fault it was, it matters that it happened. You shouldn’t have had to live through that.”</p><p>He half expects her to deflect. Turn it aside, make a joke of it, hide herself away and pretend she’s fine - but she doesn’t. She’s still shorter than him, more now than she was before, but the stool she’s sat on gives her enough extra height that when she turns her face up to his she can press their foreheads together. “No,” she agrees, eyes open and holding his gaze. “I shouldn’t. No one should.” She doesn’t try to soften it. Or make it ok, or say it built character, or that she wouldn’t be the person she was if the things she lived through hadn’t happened. It’s just a statement of fact, said with a calm acceptance, and then. Set aside.</p><p>It’s enough to make Naruto’s thoughts stumble, the head of chaotic emotions that were building in him stopped in their path. Losing Sasuke is something he’s carried for four years - they’ve <em>all</em> carried, but the idea of telling the others is something he doesn’t think he can handle just yet. To find out now, completely unprepared, that she was not only alive but that she was suffering, and the implications of Danzo being behind her clan massacre on top of that, it’s almost too much to deal with. He was all but expecting it to lead somewhere painful, drawn out and angry and fighting to be something resembling ok when it’s not, and the way Sasuke just <em>accepts</em> it?</p><p>She’s already dealt with that. The protective fury deflates; she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t need him. It doesn’t go, not entirely, none of the emotions do; she might have already dealt with it but Naruto’s only just learnt it’s there to deal with. Everything feels shaken and both too good to be true but also too awful to be real and it’ll take more than just a couple of statements and a hug to convince him that Sasuke’s actually doing alright, but. But.</p><p>For now, he just holds her closer, and lets himself be impossibly relieved that she’s alive.</p><p>She allows it for longer than he thought she would, then butts her nose against his and draws back. “I’m serious though,” she says, retrieving his ramen as though nothing had happened. “About Akatsuki hunting you down. Please tell me you are actually aware that you’re in danger.”</p><p>He shakes his head, pulling himself back to the conversation. “I - yeah. Obviously I know. They’re after all the jinchuuriki, none of us are safe.”</p><p>“Mm, which reminds me - Gaara? Excuse? Boy’s a mess. You know he’d never had ice cream before?”</p><p>He frowns. Gaara… “The one tail holder, from Sand?” he confirms. “I never actually met him before he -” he stops. Before he disappeared, with no trace and no explanation, about a month and a half ago. They assumed Akatsuki took him but no one had been able to work out how. In all honesty, Suna didn’t seem that cut up about his loss; he was strong, but also reportedly murder-happy and liable to hurt his allies as much as his enemies. But. Sasuke doesn’t sound like she’s talking about someone Akatsuki brutally extracted the bijuu from and murdered, does she.</p><p>She catches his dawning expression and huffs, but there’s an almost playful glint in her eyes. “Shush, don’t look at me like that. What was I meant to do, just leave him there? He was sad.”</p><p>“You took him to <em>Akatsuki?</em>” He doesn’t know which is worse: Sasuke finding a deranged killer and deciding to feed him ice cream and make friends, or Sasuke finding a jinchuuriki and taking him to the organisation that was explicitly formed to hunt them down. Neither, to be honest, are great.</p><p>“No, muppet. I took him backpacking to help him find himself. We’re looking for snow monkeys, and there’s also a really cool hot springs place not far from here, so. Win win.”</p><p>“What.”</p><p>“Oh, except for the cold. It’s inhuman. I hate it. Who lives like this, it’s awful.”</p><p>“So you’ve said,” a new voice cuts in, and Naruto flicks a glance back over his shoulder and freezes in place. Unlike Sasuke, Kisame has kept his Akatsuki cloak and doesn’t seem to be bothered by the sub-zero temperatures; also unlike Sasuke, his outfit - and the giant sword over his shoulder - are very clearly designed with shinobi usage in mind. Naruto is suddenly and sharply reminded that he’s in a foreign country, and that his only backup is off ‘talking spies’ and won’t be back for at least another hour yet.</p><p>“Kisame,” Sasuke complains, turning to him with an exaggerated slump. “Sharks are cold-blooded, what do you expect from me? I’m <em>suffering.</em>”</p><p>The final member of the party, a redhead about their age that Naruto vaguely identifies as Gaara of the Desert, frowns at that. “We should return to the onsen,” he says. “It’s warmer than here, and they have tea.”</p><p>Sasuke awards him a satisfied grin. “Gaara gets it. Gaara, this is Naruto. He’s good people and we like him. Did you mention tea because you think I want one or because you want one?”</p><p>“Everyone wants tea,” Gaara tells her, and Kisame snorts and leans back until he can catch the ramen chef’s eye. The fact that this is a street food stall and not somewhere that typically brings tea over to the table for you does not appear to matter to him, and the chef looks uneasily at his sword and decides to make an exception.</p><p>“He’s also the holder of the nine tails and someone we should really be delivering to Pein,” Kisame adds onto Sasuke’s introduction, and she waves him off and turns back to Naruto with a conspiratorial grin.</p><p>“Deidara and Sasori have been looking for Gaara for weeks,” she confides. “It’s hilarious. We’ve been sending them postcards, Deidara can’t decide if we’re just winding him up or not. I’m not sure though, I think Sasori suspects.”</p><p>Naruto looks between them. Gaara is nodding, Kisame looks vaguely amused in the way of people who’ve washed their hands of a situation and are sitting back to watch the fireworks, and Sasuke is removing his noodles one by one and coiling them round her chopsticks like tiny ramen scarves before eating them. She’s already demolished all the toppings and left a tidy stack of pork to go cold on the side.</p><p>“Oh,” he says, not sure if he’s meant to be escaping or not. He’s still stuck on <em>he’s good people and we like him.</em> That, and the fact that Sasuke is alive, and it’s an effort not to hug her again to check she’s really there. “And you’re not… worried, that Sasori suspects?”</p><p>In reply she just pauses her noodle-knitting and winks at him.</p><p>“Boy,” Kisame says, “We’re sharks.” He flashes his teeth. Sasori, according to Jiraiya’s research, is one the most accomplished puppeteers Suna ever produced. The fact that Kisame isn’t concerned is not too surprising; the fact that <em>Sasuke</em> isn’t concerned… The fact that Sasuke seems to be counted as a shark, even. Naruto desperately wants to ask her about it, wants to find out everything that happened and everything about her and catalog all the things that he recognises against all the things that are new, but Kisame raises an eyebrow at him and continues. “Are you going to run or not?”</p><p>“Not <em>here</em>,” Sasuke protests. “Don’t flood the food market, you <em>barbarian</em>. Naruto can escape when Gaara’s had his tea. Also, I want other lunch.” She turns to Naruto with an accusing frown. “Why did you make me eat ramen? I don’t like ramen.” She fishes through the broth to make sure she’s got the last of it, then pushes the bowl decisively back to him. “Next time I’m picking,” she tells him with no room for argument, and there comes a point where a guy has to stand up for his right to know what’s going on, and being accused of forcing someone to steal his ramen is surely it.</p><p>“Just so I know,” he says, looking between the three of them. “Are you actually working for Akatsuki?”</p><p>“Yes,” Kisame says, at the same time as Gaara lowers his teacup and says, “No.” Sasuke just taps her nose, which clears exactly nothing up.</p><p>“Ok. And when I escape, are you genuinely going to be trying to kidnap me and kill me for my bijuu, or is there an elaborate ploy I’m not aware of?”</p><p>“<em>If</em> you escape,” Kisame corrects. “The one tail is Sasori and Deidara’s problem, but you’re ours and we’re better at our job than they are.” He doesn’t seem in the least bit apologetic about it either, and when Naruto just stares, he shrugs. “It’s for a good cause.”</p><p>It’s not comforting. Naruto rather doubts it was meant to be, and when he looks dubiously at Sasuke, all he gets is an eye roll in return. “You’re going to escape,” she tells him. “I’m pretty sure the good cause is a carnivorous tree, ignore it.”</p><p>… Also, if Naruto is honest, not comforting. He retrieves the pork Sasuke left and hides his other hand in the crook of his elbow to make a one-handed cross seal, and half a dozen orange beetles - the smallest he can henge without disrupting the clones - drop discretely down the table leg to the floor.</p><p>Sasuke throws her hands in the air and pouts. “No faith. The deep ocean is rooting for you, and you think you need a beetle to keep you safe. The lack of trust in this general vicinity is deeply hurtful, I hope you know that.”</p><p>“I trust you,” Gaara protests.</p><p>“I don’t,” Kisame counters. “Half the things you summon from your deep ocean aren’t even sharks, you cheated on your contract. If you’re going to have other lunch have it soon, Gaara’s almost done with his tea.”</p><p>“Nah. I’ll get oshiruko later. And I so did not, it’s not my fault you found the first things with teeth and didn’t bother to swim down.”</p><p>“The first things with - <em>brat,</em> walk into my water jutsu and say that, I <em>dare</em> you.”</p><p>Gaara tilts his head towards him and offers Naruto the teapot. “It’s ok,” he says. “Sometimes insults are friendly, even if they don’t sound like they are.”</p><p>“<em>Friendly?</em>” Naruto repeats, shaking his head. It has the ring of repetition to it, and it’s not by itself unusual, but if Sasuke is short compared to him she’s absolutely tiny next to Kisame and watching her square up to him, even playfully, is weirdly disorientating. Somehow his mind is stuck on her being eternally twelve and vulnerable; this new and confident teenage version is a lot for him to try and take in, and he both wants to retreat to give himself chance to react but also to stay and never lose sight of her again. If he could just tell if Kisame was being serious about threatening to kidnap him, and he bites his lip as he hesitates. </p><p>“You trust her,” he says to Gaara, keeping his voice low.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Do you trust Kisame? Even though he’s working for an organisation that wants to kill you?”</p><p>“So is she,” Gaara points out. He turns to Naruto assessingly, and Naruto might never have met him before but apparently Sasuke’s introduction holds enough weight for Gaara to answer him seriously. “You’re trying to work out if you need to escape or not,” he says, blunt, but more honestly than harshly. “You do. She wants you to. If Kisame is your ally, he would want the same; if he isn’t, then it’s in your best interest to get away.”</p><p>It’s the sensible answer, but not the one he wants. “You’re a jinchuuriki, and you’re staying.” You get to stay, he almost says, then a thought occurs to him and he glances over at Gaara in alarm. “Wait, why are you staying? Are you -”</p><p>“Mine,” Sasuke interrupts, reinserting herself in the conversation. “I found him, he’s happy, I keep him. Hands off.”</p><p>“She gave me ice cream,” Gaara adds, and drains the last of his tea. “It was strawberry.”</p><p><em>Strawberry,</em> Naruto thinks, and his mind almost goes back to another time and another fruit and he wants everything to pause and give him a moment to catch up because he’s still stuck on the fact that <em>Sasuke didn’t die -</em> but, Gaara's finished his tea. Time’s up. Kisame hefts Samehada with purposeful intent and Sasuke glares and tells him to hold it till they’re out of reach of the food stalls and all Naruto can do is hope - hell, hope isn’t a strong enough word but it’s what he’s got - he’ll see Sasuke again.</p><p> </p><p>Later, when he has, in fact, narrowly escaped and has rendezvoused with Jiraiya somewhere far away from snow monkeys and hot springs, Naruto leaves out some of the details in his retelling. “I lost them in the backstreets,” he says. “They seemed unwilling to fight with so many civilians around.”</p><p>“Trying to keep their cover, maybe,” Jiraiya says, frowning. “Or trying not to jeopardise a mission - I’ve still not found what they’re here for, usually the missions Akatsuki take are high profile enough that I’d’ve at least heard <em>something.</em>”</p><p>There’s a pause. Naruto doesn’t really want to ask, but Sasuke’s right; it’s a hell of a coincidence that they met like this. “Did you know? That it was Sasuke?”</p><p>Did you know the teammate we thought committed suicide was alive?</p><p>Jiraiya hesitates, but for once his face is serious when he looks over at Naruto. “I had suspicions,” he says. “Nothing concrete. I’m sorry for not telling you, I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”</p><p>Maybe, but just because Naruto learnt to play the idiot at an early age, it doesn’t always mean he is one. “And you thought I’d have a better chance of reaching her if my reactions were genuine,” he says, filling in the gaps that Jiraiya’s missed. What had Sasuke said? <em>Therapy no jutsu won’t work. Konoha can suck it, I’m not going back.</em> He toys with the idea of being angry about it, but. If Naruto had been trying to get her to come home, then, arguably, Jiraiya would have been right. It’s still a shitty play but not a meaninglessly shitty one.</p><p>Not that that makes it much better.</p><p>“It won’t work. I’m not going to change her mind and bring her home.” He doesn’t even know if he’s going to try - if he's understood right, if Danzo's the reason her clan is dead? And besides that, if <em>Danzo’s</em> the one that spent a year scrambling her brain? But then, Danzo’s dead too, and she has good memories of Konoha as well, doesn’t she? She must do. Team Seven was good, and she clearly isn’t with Akatsuki because she believes in their mission. Naruto still can’t work out what the dynamic is between her and Kisame, because ‘agreeing to disagree’ is just so <em>bizarre</em> to apply to a situation like this.</p><p>But on the other hand, she’s happy. She’s settled, in a way she never was before. Therapied, she called it. She’s therapied, and Naruto doesn’t have any right to take that from her. She said she wasn’t going back. Naruto’s not going to make her.</p><p>“Kid,” Jiraiya starts, a weary understanding on his face that doesn’t really understand anything, because Sasuke isn’t Orochimaru and Naruto isn’t Jiraiya and for all the parallels people like to draw about him and Sakura being the next generation of the Sannin, they’re not the same at all when you actually look at them.</p><p>“Oh, and she has the one tail,” he says, as though he hadn’t heard. “Sabaku no Gaara. He’s doing well. Likes tea.” He debates withholding that they’re here for the snow monkeys and that’s why Jiraiya can’t find any hint of a mission for them - Jiraiya clearly has no problem withholding information from <em>him</em> - but ultimately, there’s no reason to except because he’s annoyed. “Tourist life suits him.”</p><p>For a long second Jiraiya doesn’t answer, and Naruto tilts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. They both know he’s avoiding the subject, so what. Sasuke is Team Seven, the <em>original</em> Team Seven when they still had Kakashi to lead them, he doesn’t have to share her with people who don’t understand if he doesn’t want to.</p><p>“Suits her too,” he says, cutting across whatever Jiraiya was going to say. “She wasn’t even dressed for fighting. She had a kimono on. With fish. It was pretty.”</p><p>Jiraiya lets his breath out in a heavy sigh and accepts the subject change. “Leave the tragic romances for the stories,” he says. “They never work like you want them to in real life.”</p><p>“Oi,” Naruto protests, relieved. “Just because you can’t get a date doesn’t mean the rest of us are doomed to be single forever.” His thoughts catch up to what he’s saying, and he baulks. “And who said anything about a tragic romance anyway? It’s <em>Sasuke.</em> Girl or boy, she’s probably still a bastard. She stole my ramen, even. She said she doesn’t <em>like</em> ramen, how the hell did you get <em>pining and romantic</em> from that?”</p><p>“Oho, you let her steal your ramen, did you? You never share your precious ramen with your dear old sensei.” He clasps his hands under his chin and falls back in an over-dramatic swoon. “Never call me pretty either, or notice the things I’m wearing. Fish on her kimono, was it? <em>Suits her,</em> does it? Maybe I should take a look, cast an experienced eye over things and see for myself -”</p><p>“Try it and die, Ero-sennin.”</p><p>Romance, honestly. His thoughts are still stuck on the fact that she’s alive; not everyone jumps straight to true love when the precious person they thought they’d lost forever waltzes back into their life and turns it upside down. He settles back against his headboard and keeps half a mind on rebuffing Jiraiya’s teasing banter, careful not to let his frown show on his face. Turned his life upside down - that barely begins to cover it. Did anyone else know? That Sasuke wasn’t dead, that Danzo had taken her - that Danzo was connected to the Uchiha massacre? Now that she’s said it, he can see how the red mochi were meant to mimic sharingan, but no one had seen it at the time. At least, no one had speculated about it where Naruto could hear, but there’s a difference between Danzo grave-robbing under the Sandaime’s nose and Danzo… What, murdering an entire clan? Is that what Sasuke’s implying?</p><p>Is that what Danzo <em>did?</em></p><p>And if it is. Then. How much did Konoha help him?</p><p>He shies away from the thought, just in time to catch Jiraiya explaining how he’d thought Naruto was gay because of the lack of interest he’d shown in fine literature before.</p><p>“What fine literature,” he huffs. “If the women in your books were actually believable then <em>maybe</em>, but not reading them doesn’t mean I’m gay. It means I have good taste.” Jiraiya squawks and Naruto grins, and ignores the tiny voice that says <em>But if Sasuke was still a boy like she was before, then you’d be gay,</em> because obviously, the things Naruto are attracted to in people are hardly constrained by gender - except <em>not</em> obviously because the only reason he’s thinking of Sasuke like that at all is because Jiraiya has a one track mind and put the thoughts in Naruto’s head.</p><p>He just. Needs some time to process. That’s all. It’s a lot to take in, and there’s a lot of it he isn’t letting himself get too close to until he’s by himself and doesn’t have to keep up a facade of not being affected by it. And if he wishes Sasuke hadn’t called Kisame, if he wishes they’d had more of a chance to catch up without the pressure of needing to escape weighing over him - well. Sasuke did say that next time she was picking lunch, so. Not bringing her back to Konoha doesn’t have to mean not seeing her again, and he can’t help but look forward to it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Sasuke in Suna: Gaara (Shukaku) pt.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Several people have requested more Gaara, and you can't look at Gaara without looking at Shukaku, but apparently you can't write a ficlet for Gaara and Shukaku and keep it to just one chapter in length.</p>
<p>Part 1 gives a Gaara and Shukaku viewpoint of the main story up to the end of the chunin exams (chapter 28). It's filed under Sasuke in Suna because that's where part 2 will go, but this particular chapter could be taken as canon if you like.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm not a fan of rewriting scenes in full so it'll be helpful if you're familiar with the Gaara and Sasuke meetings from Sasuke's point of view. If you need a refresher, then you want chapters 19 (Sasuke meets Gaara on the wall of the Suna compound), 20 (Gaara tries to kill Sasuke when she breaks in to talk to the Kazekage, then follows her to the river for an exchange of backstories), 24/25 (Sand siblings attack Team Ten; later, Gaara saves Sasuke from Orochimaru), and 28 (Gaara forfeits his match against Shikamaru).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gaara. It’s… an odd name. His mother - his birth mother - meant it kindly, but she died before she could explain it. His uncle told him he was named for a curse, a self-loving carnage, a blight on Suna for everything they had done.</p>
<p>Age six, Gaara’s not sure what ‘everything’ means. Still, though. His uncle betrayed him and his heart hurts, and if the only cure for this sort of pain is love and the only one who would ever love him is himself, then. Ok. He can do that.</p>
<p>His father thinks he’s unhinged and uncontrollable. The various teachers that are forced on him think he’s dangerous, and his siblings are scared of him. Like a wild animal that could snap at any moment, but even wild animals are simple enough once you understand the reasons they snap.</p>
<p>He isn’t any of those things. Or, he doesn’t mean to be. He’s just doing what he was told. A self-loving carnage, a blight on Suna. His uncle told him to die, and that’s the only bit he actively disobeys, but everything else - he tries. He doesn’t always succeed.</p>
<p>His heart keeps hurting. Blood is not love. Blood doesn’t heal it. Blood gives the voice in his head a brief flood of satisfaction, a vicious <em>delight</em> in the way that even caged and bound they can still lash out and affect the world around them, and that helps.</p>
<p><em>It’s like you don’t exist,</em> his mother tells him once, late at night or early in the morning when everyone else is asleep. <em>Stuck in a tea-kettle, you don’t even know how long. Nothing you can do except think and all your thoughts drive you mad. It’s like you don’t exist.</em></p>
<p>“I don’t want to not exist,” Gaara says, though in truth the concept is too big for him to wrap his head around. He’s only seven. He’s still not used to making his own decisions - his uncle had always been the one to do that. He’d tried to give Gaara the tools to decide for himself, but he hadn’t tried as hard as he should. He hadn’t realised he was working to a time limit. But; he’s not here, and he left very few instructions that Gaara’s able to follow now he’s gone, and Gaara might not understand what it means to be so alone that he may as well not exist but he understands enough to know that his mother is afraid of it.</p>
<p><em>I’m not afraid,</em> they correct with a disgruntled huff.</p>
<p>“Because it won’t happen again,” he says, nodding his understanding. “I won’t let you stop existing.” His mother huffs again but accepts his promise, and he listens dutifully as they teach him how to make the world recognise them. He takes the seeds of Suna’s fear and builds them into a reputation, collecting blood with a single minded purpose and hunching protectively around the brief satisfaction it brings as though it would finally cure the way his heart keeps hurting and never heals.</p>
<p>“Mother,” he asks another time, when he’s a bit older and no less curious about the world, “Why aren’t you like other mothers? Is it because you died?”</p>
<p><em>I didn’t die,</em> his mother scoffs back. <em>I’m not your mother because I whelped you. I’m your mother because some idiot stuck us together and abandoned us.</em></p>
<p>“Oh.” He pauses, then, “Do you love me?”</p>
<p><em>I won’t let you get hurt,</em> they say. They, not she. Mothers are usually she but Gaara’s mother laughed when they heard that thought; they are sandstorms and deserts and the feel of the dunes stretching for endless miles to haze-hidden horizons. They have been a monk in the past because it amused them, they are a mother now because Gaara needs them, they are a tanuki dog always because that’s where they started and some things are too intrinsic to change. <em>Does that count?</em></p>
<p>Gaara considers. It sounds like it should, but his uncle was clear: love is what heals pain, not what prevents it. “I don’t think so,” he decides. “But thank you.”</p>
<p><em>Love is overrated,</em> his mother snaps, stung. <em>I want to kill something. Let me out.</em></p>
<p>He does, but only enough for them to stretch through the sand and lift it in dancing currents towards the stars. He could let them out further, could step back and shut off his mind in a way that mimics sleep and let them go so far he wouldn’t know what would happen, but he’s afraid. If he doesn’t know what would happen, he can’t know that his mother would still be there when he woke up. If he woke up. They wouldn’t need him if they weren’t trapped together, and selfishly, rebelliously, he doesn’t want to lose them.</p>
<p>It’s not the only thing he wants. Or doesn’t want. There are a lot of them, growing in number as he grows from small child to older child to sullen twelve year old - sometimes, it feels like there are too many. He wants the rush of satisfaction when he crushes someone and the blood spills out over the sand; he wants the wind when it blows so hard he can almost feel it through the armour shell he always wears. When you dig far enough down and the sand is bitterly cold even in the middle of the day; that’s another thing he can almost feel. He doesn’t want to hurt, he doesn’t want pain, but sometimes he thinks he wants to shed all his sand like a second skin, tear it off and step out naked and vulnerable and <em>touch</em> things. Feel them. For real, against his skin, on his tongue and stinging in his eyes. He doesn’t know what it’ll be like, but he can picture it, and all his life he’s been living in a tea-kettle and shouting down the spout and the only time people ever shout back are when he kills them, is this what his mother meant when they said you can be so alone it drives you mad? He’s a desert storm in a tiny cage and he’s so <em>desperate</em> to get out but he doesn’t know how, slamming his fists against the world and all he does is make people step further away, life is a thing that happens to other people and maybe he kills them because mother asks but maybe he kills them because it isn’t fair that they should have something he and his mother have always been denied -</p>
<p>“Absolutely not,” the Konoha genin snaps, and he stumbles. “You,” the genin snarls, pointing aggressively, “Get off the wall. You’re in a foreign village. <em>Act like it</em>.”</p>
<p>Gaara stares. The genin - breakable, like everyone is, so easy to kill and so satisfying to watch them die - stares back. Lifts his - her? - chin and scowls, and no one’s made eye contact since before his uncle died. Not unless they’re forced to.</p>
<p>Gaara isn’t forcing the genin. The genin looks at him because… Gaara doesn’t know. They were afraid before, but not of Gaara, and they aren’t afraid now.</p>
<p>“Aa,” he says, unsure, and old behaviour says it’s easier to do what he’s told than to decide for himself when he doesn’t understand, so he does. He’s not clear what it means to act like he’s in a foreign village, except that he’s meant to be a blight on Suna, not Konoha, and that Baki’s made it very clear that he’s not allowed to get caught proving his existence outside the exam, but getting off the wall is easy enough.</p>
<p><em>You didn’t let me kill her,</em> his mother complains. <em>I wanted her blood.</em></p>
<p>Her, then. Gaara hasn’t spent enough time socialising to always be able to tell, but mother has more experience of the world. “Her blood is still there,” he says. “We can get it later.”</p>
<p>They settle reluctantly in the back of his head, and Gaara finds a new place to watch from and doesn’t go back to the wall.</p>
<p>He doesn’t have to. The genin comes back a few nights later, this time inside the compound, fear spilling bitter and frantic out of her. Mother traces it and Gaara follows, and this time, he means to kill her. He surrounds the genin in sand and goes to crush -</p>
<p>She isn’t there.</p>
<p><em>That way,</em> Mother insists, and Gaara follows obediently and waits for the genin to emerge from the water. When she does the fear is gone, and the rapid shift between panic and calm is novel enough that Gaara pauses and asks, “What were you afraid of?”</p>
<p><em>Blood,</em> Mother demands impatiently, and Gaara considers it, but. He’s been selfish before. He didn’t die when his uncle told him to, he hasn’t set his mother free to destroy Suna like he thinks he was meant to. He’s curious. The genin isn’t following patterns. The genin isn’t afraid. The genin looks at him and sees him without being forced to, talks to him like he’s a person. Listens when Gaara talks back. Gaara isn’t sure why he talks back, but he associates existing with the rush that comes from killing someone, and the attention he’s being given with this faltering conversation is… similar. New. Interesting. If Gaara kills the genin now, he’ll lose the chance to keep talking; if he keeps talking, he can always kill the genin later, and that seems logical enough.</p>
<p>The genin pushes at his shoulder. Not hard. Barely detectable through the sand armour, but still. He felt it.</p>
<p>“Go back to your compound, Suna. You’re not meant to be this side of the wall without a guide.”</p>
<p><em>Walls are prisons and prisons are made to be broken,</em> Mother snarls, and there’s an old fear behind it that Gaara understands a lot better now than he did when he was small, <em>but</em>.</p>
<p>Scattered among the many things the genin didn’t know were other things the genin did, and her instructions were clear enough and easy to follow. Go back to the compound. Don’t kill people I like. Ask me later, when I’m not dripping river yuck down the back of my neck.</p>
<p>Forget the love thing, but Gaara’s rebelled before and he has no problems in doing so again, and he ignores that instruction. He doesn’t want to forget the love thing. He still hurts, is still so alone that he’s slowly dissolving into not existing and the agony of it drives him mad, and love is still the only hope he has for healing a heart-wound like that; it’s a big thing to be asked to forget.</p>
<p>“If she’s not like me,” he says later, when it’s just him and Mother again, “Maybe she’s like you?”</p>
<p>Mother barks a laugh. <em>You’re looking at the wrong human if you want to find someone like me.</em></p>
<p>“She understands not existing,” Gaara insists, “She’s afraid of failing but not afraid of me. She’s different from other people.”</p>
<p><em>Different?</em> Mother repeats scornfully. <em>No one’s different. That’s the oldest lie there is. People are people, they all think they’re special. Anyone who says they’re not like the rest is acting the same as they all do, don’t be taken in by it.</em></p>
<p>Maybe. Then again, the genin - Sasuke, Gaara learns, and apparently she’s an Uchiha and short tempered as well as afraid - continues to be different, despite what Mother says. Continues to look at Gaara, to see him, to speak to him and reach for him and Gaara’s skin is still covered in an impenetrable layer of sand but that doesn’t <em>matter</em> because when he’s talking to Sasuke it’s like standing in a wind that he can almost feel; they’re in the forest and Gaara has another Konoha genin trapped in his sand and all around them are people who aren’t important but Sasuke’s in front of him and somehow Sasuke <em>is</em> even if Gaara doesn’t understand why, he thought he was doing the right thing in killing someone she didn’t like but he wasn’t except she’s not stone faced like Baki when Gaara missteps and she’s not trying to dispose of him like his father when he doesn’t do what he’s meant to and she’s still not afraid despite how Mother is snarling for <em>someone’s</em> blood and -</p>
<p>He doesn’t mean to flinch away when she offers her hand to shake. He does it anyway because it’s too much.</p>
<p>It’s too much.</p>
<p>She is different. She has to be different. Mother is always right but surely Sasuke is different. Gaara turns it over in his mind, even after he’s collected his siblings and left her and the Konoha genin behind in the clearing.</p>
<p>His siblings don’t know why he did that. They’re too wary of him to ask, but he can tell they’re confused. So is he. His mother says Sasuke is just like anyone else. Sasuke herself said she wasn’t like Gaara, even if she could see where he was coming from when he said that she was. But - she looked at him. He didn’t need to kill her to make her, she didn’t need to die to see him. She validated his existence, and all she did was talk. Other people can’t do that, but she did, and therefore she must be different.</p>
<p>She’s important.</p>
<p><em>I keep you alive,</em> his mother interrupts, bristling with a murderous intent that Gaara doesn’t let them act on.</p>
<p>“You were alive in the tea-kettle,” he reminds them. “It’s not the same.”</p>
<p>
  <em>If we’re talking same, then some idiot being too stupid to be afraid of you is not the same as them caring. What about my existence? Where’s my validation? I want her blood.</em>
</p>
<p>“There’s other blood,” Gaara offers, the edge of stubborn argument creeping into his voice. He doesn’t like disagreeing with his mother, it’s not something he’s good at, but he also wants to understand. Unlike most things he wants, this one feels tantalisingly close to being in reach.</p>
<p>A flare of familiar fear from another patch of the forest derails the discussion; Mother snarls, swinging wide in an arc of sand that Gaara follows with no thought to the siblings he’s abandoning as he does, and when he sees Sasuke backed in a corner and terrified he acts before he can think to stop himself. If Sasuke is different, then she can’t be allowed to die. If she isn’t different, then her blood belongs to Mother. Either way the outcome is the same: Gaara will kill the ninja that’s attacking her, and then he will find out the answer to his question.</p>
<p>Except he doesn’t. Except Sasuke insists on being confusing and contrary and <em>frustrating</em>, Gaara has always preferred being told what to do instead of having to work it out for himself because life is hard and he’s never been taught to navigate it, and on the surface Sasuke is perfect because she tells him in great detail what she wants him to do but in reality those instructions don’t <em>mean</em> anything.</p>
<p>Kill this person or don’t, that doesn’t change anything in the long run. Get off the wall - ok, done; what’s next? Ask me later, but Gaara asks, and she still doesn’t know and she wants Gaara to have his own answers and what’s he supposed to do with <em>that?</em></p>
<p>Move, she tells him in the middle of the battle, You can’t block that, but she doesn’t even give him chance to obey.</p>
<p><em>Seal,</em> Mother snarls in the back of his head, afraid and vicious with it, and Gaara barely has time to reorientate himself to the tree before his sand has leapt out at Orochimaru with the full force of Mother’s hate behind it.</p>
<p>Orochimaru runs. Mother tightens the sand-shield around Sasuke and for a moment Gaara thinks they’re finally going to get their blood - but they don’t.</p>
<p><em>She’s telling me about gardens,</em> Mother says, confused. <em>Why is she telling me about gardens? </em>Then, after a short pause, <em>Of course flowers die. What does she expect? Honestly. They’ll come back next time it rains, humans aren’t that short-lived.</em></p>
<p>“Gardens?” Gaara repeats.</p>
<p><em>Sand gardens,</em> Mother confirms, which isn’t that helpful. <em>Let her out, she’s drawing mountains.</em> Gaara goes to do so, but they stop him. <em>Wait.</em></p>
<p>They don’t elaborate, and it’s less than half a minute later that they start pulling the sand back again.</p>
<p>Sasuke emerges, blinking, not afraid. Mother is quiet, but doesn’t try to crush her again, and doesn’t say anything to help Gaara know what to do with the fact that Sasuke got injured trying to protect him. That she <em>trusts</em> him, that it’s nothing to do with the fact that she’s stronger than him or that she could stop him, it’s that she’s looked at him and seen him and decided that he is someone she can rely on to keep her alive.</p>
<p><em>She doesn’t know you very well,</em> Mother says, though it lacks her previous scorn. <em>Keeping people alive isn’t really your style.</em></p>
<p>“But she was right,” Gaara says. “I didn’t kill her.” It comes out confused. Frustrated. He’s always defaulted to doing what he’s told but Sasuke makes him work through things for himself, even if just to try and find the right questions to get the answers he needs. “I didn’t kill her,” he repeats, frowning.</p>
<p>He does what he’s told, but there are a lot of things he wants that no one tells him how to get. He wants to feel. He wants to exist. He wants not to be lonely and not to hurt, he wants the old heart-wounds to finally heal. He <em>wants.</em></p>
<p>“I’m not going to kill her,” he decides. He says it slowly, sounding it out. It’s the first instruction he’s given himself. Even promising his mother he wouldn’t let them not exist was something they told him to do. It’s more than just rebelling against orders he doesn’t like, more than deciding to disobey because there are things he doesn’t want to do. It’s… defining. It’s defining. It’s taking the raw edges of himself and drawing a line to shape what he will and will not do and it’s attaching a fact to the concept of him that <em>he</em> chose to attach and it’s…</p>
<p>It’s not existing. Is it? No. It’s not enough to know who you are if no one else does, that’s not how loneliness works, but it’s something similar. </p>
<p><em>I know you,</em> Mother protests, the sand of his armour shifting restlessly over his skin, a constant sensation he’s felt all his life that he barely even registers anymore. <em>I want blood.</em></p>
<p>Gaara gives them blood. A day later, he also watches Sasuke forfeit her match rather than win against the genin she had at her mercy, and frowns as he tries to puzzle through what to do when he’s pitted against the genin from the forest that Sasuke asked him not to kill.</p>
<p><em>She’s watching,</em> Mother says, and Gaara’s eyes flick her way without conscious thought.</p>
<p>It’s not existing. It doesn’t heal the aching hurt of everything life has given him so far, it’s not the rush of satisfaction he gets when someone dies and their blood runs red over his sand. It’s not an answer, she doesn’t have that, <em>Gaara</em> doesn’t have that, but it feels like it could become one if Gaara gave it time, and he raises his hand and chooses to define himself in a way that no one told him to do.</p>
<p>“I forfeit,” he says, and the stadium goes quiet in shock. The stadium doesn’t matter. Sasuke leans forward with laughter in her expression and grins at him.</p>
<p><em>She’s proud of you,</em> Mother passes on, her sharper hearing picking up the words that Gaara can’t. Then, annoyed again, <em>She called you a sweet summer child. She makes no sense.</em></p>
<p>“She doesn’t have to,” Gaara retorts, unable to stop himself standing straighter under Sasuke’s approval. Very little of what Sasuke says makes sense. “That’s not the point.”</p>
<p>
  <em>Then why does she matter so much? What is the point?</em>
</p>
<p>With a private amusement that he doesn’t let show, Gaara replies, “I’m working on it. Ask me later.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Gaara: Sasuke's the only person to ever see me without needing to be killed first<br/>Shukaku: What am I, chopped liver?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Same no Sasuke: Orochimaru</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For all the time sunk into his search for the last Uchiha, Orochimaru is less than impressed with what he finds.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Same no Sasuke,” Orochimaru says, lips stretching into a satisfied grin. “You’re a hard person to find.”</p><p>“I’m wearing earrings that jingle when I walk,” she says flatly in response. “Maybe you just suck at looking.”</p><p>“Konoha thinks you’re dead,” he continues, ignoring her. “Suicided at twelve, wasn’t it? Couldn’t handle being dropped from your team. But that’s not the truth, is it,” and here his grin turns victorious and leading, “<em>Uchiha</em> Sasuke.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer this time, just stares, unimpressed. He knows her name. Big whoop. She’d cross her arms, maybe tap her foot, but both arms and feet are currently being held immobile by the snake summon jutsu that tethers them to the ground.</p><p>Orochimaru doesn’t let her lack of reaction stop him. “Spent a year in ROOT,” he says, voice toeing that fine line between gleeful and mockingly sympathetic. “Went in with such potential and lived up to it so beautifully, Danzo was so <em>proud</em> of how you turned out.”</p><p>“I was there, thanks,” she says. “Can we skip the backstory?”</p><p>“But I put so much effort into tracking it down,” he - pouts? Taunts? There’s too much anticipation in his expression, it’s muddying whatever mind games he’s trying to play. Not trying particularly hard, not with the way Sasuke just tilts her head and refuses to rise to them, but her jaw is clenched too tightly for her to be as unaffected as she claims. “Into tracking <em>you </em>down, Sasuke-chan -”</p><p>“Don’t call me that.”</p><p>“- and here when I find you, I expect an Uchiha and all I get is…” He gestures at her, pretty clothes and dangling jewellery and all, and she lifts her chin and waits for him to finish. He doesn’t, just pauses, considering, and changes tack. “What would your brother say,” he asks, silkily, invitingly, “If he could see you now?”</p><p>She doesn’t twitch. Or jerk, or flinch; she stills, muscles relaxing, tension smoothing out of her face. Her eyelids drop, lazily, half-lidded. “Why are you provoking me?” she asks.</p><p>He straightens, sensing the shift and loosening his own posture in turn. “To see what you can do.” It’s still goading, but there’s an edge of honesty to it. He wants an Uchiha host - that’s no secret, and after Itachi died the rumours of her were the only chance he had to get one, but rumours are unreliable things. “Akatsuki wouldn’t keep you unless you were strong, and your reputation in ROOT was too good to ignore.”</p><p>“Akatsuki kept me because my brother told them to,” she says, still lazy. It’s the truth. ROOT made her brutal, but not in a way Itachi would let them use. “Then they kept me because they wanted Kisame and they were used to having me around.”</p><p>“And the fact that the sharingan controls the tailed beasts, I suppose, is nothing to do with it?”</p><p>“It’s not. I don’t have a sharingan.”</p><p>He raises an eyebrow. “Lie,” he accuses, mildly, as though they were discussing the weather or the supposed health benefits of matcha tea. The snakes at Sasuke’s wrists tighten in warning. “You have the mangekyou. You activated it when your brother died, and at least one of the powers it granted you was control of the same unstoppable fire he used to use.”</p><p>She blinks. Her eyes stay black, but in the gloom, they almost seem to glow.</p><p>It’s noon. The gloom is… out of place.</p><p>“I don’t have a sharingan,” she repeats, measured and even. She doesn’t explain.</p><p>“And you aren’t Uchiha either, is that what you pretend?” Orochimaru presses. “Same no Sasuke… You aren’t even the same gender anymore. How many people, I wonder, would fail to make the connection between who you are and who you claim not to be?”</p><p>“I didn’t give myself that title.”</p><p>Her kimono is blue, covered in white ripple patterns like water at the shore. In the weak sunlight that filters down (through what? There's nothing above them), it looks almost grey. So does the grass beneath her feet; it doesn’t move in the breeze anymore - there isn’t a breeze anymore - and the green has leached out to leave the ground looking bald and dark. The path is not visible. There are shadows on the edge of what used to be an open plain.</p><p>Orochimaru sneers in distaste and abandons his attempts to make her fight. “You are remarkably uninspiring,” he tells her, chakra flexing to dispel the illusion. It doesn’t dispel - he can’t even feel the threads of it to unravel, and he holds himself wary and on edge. Itachi bested him with genjutsu once; Sasuke didn’t have a reputation for it and he’d hoped she’d avoided that particular sharingan skill, but it doesn’t matter. Genjutsu don’t work on summons, and with her still being held by the snakes even the most complex illusion won’t do her any good.</p><p>At least, most illusions wouldn’t, and he’s careful not to make eye contact. “No matter,” he continues, putting aside his disappointment at not being able to see her skills in person. “Your personality isn’t the reason I’m interested in you.”</p><p>“It should be,” she says. “I’m a delight. Can your snakes breathe underwater?”</p><p>He frowns. Sasuke of the Sharks - if Kisame took her under his wing like the evidence suggests, he supposes water jutsu are to be expected, but their use is limited this far inland. It’s not <em>impossible</em> she’s also learnt Kisame’s techniques to summon a lake’s worth of water and fill it with teeth, but that sort of blunt force doesn’t match the research Orochimaru has on her.</p><p>He readies lightning in one hand, and sends his chakra down to the rock below the soil in preparation for an earth jutsu with the other. “Threats work better if they’re believable,” he chides her. She’s still trapped by his snakes. She hasn’t even tried to escape, for all her illusion has all but blotted out the sun with its endless, enveloping dark. “We’re a long way from the sea.”</p><p>“No,” she says, and her eyes reflect his lightning in a flash of white. “We’re really, really not.”</p><p>He moves. The shadows follow him. His snakes unsummon with a gargled hiss as the sudden pressure forces the air out their lungs; the earth beneath him falls away and his lightning arcs forward, but Sasuke is no longer held in place and she’s too fast to be hit by it. It dissipates; electricity beats water but one lightning bolt does not beat the ocean, and at most it leaves a trail of ions as it electrifies the salt water in its wake.</p><p>“Bleach,” Sasuke notes, her voice distorted through the surface of her bubble. “I’ve been looking for that.”</p><p>Orochimaru whirls, hands flying through more jutsu, skin hardening to white scales to withstand the crushing weight bearing down on him. It’s not enough. He can’t see to aim, sounds are distant and echo strangely; they are miles below the surface and fighting only burns through his oxygen faster. He summons Manda, the tattoos on his arms flaring white-hot from the chakra he pushes through them, but Manda doesn’t come. He summons kusanagi, splitting open his jaw and spitting out his sword but his movements are dulled and slowed by the water dragging on them and he can’t slice like he needs to, he turns his limbs boneless and sheds his skin to reveal the snake-like parasite he is underneath, he hisses and the poisons he releases from his blood turn the water around him toxic and deadly but they are soon diluted and drift away, he snarls at the shadows and watches in satisfaction as they back away but they don't go far and he doesn't have the air left to make them.</p><p>They circle. They are patient. One, small and somewhat fish-like in appearance, splits off to loop instead around Sasuke, lazily drifting with her as she waits.</p><p>If a bubble is thin enough and its surface area is large enough, oxygen can pass through it to make it act like a giant lung. She isn’t on a time limit. She isn’t going to drown.</p><p>“I don’t have a sharingan,” she says, ducking the attack Orochimaru lunges towards the sound of her voice with an almost idle movement. “I did, you weren’t wrong. I even had the mangekyou. I don’t have it any more. And the thing that gets me, the thing I really hate about all you fuckers who were after it. Did it never occur to you that I could be someone without it?”</p><p>“Same no Sasuke,” Orochimaru chokes out, rasping hoarsely against his serpentine throat. He laughs, harsh and grating; he’s put too much effort into surviving to die here, but his earlier disappointment has turned to a wheezing delight. “Sasuke of the Sharks. Life is so much more <em>interesting</em> when it’s a surprise.”</p><p>“Don’t spoil it for other people then,” Sasuke says dryly, and with a silent inevitability, the sharks attack.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For the sake of transparency: I have looked, but can't actually find a definitive answer either way for whether you'd get bleach if you fired a lightning bolt at the bottom of the sea. In <i>theory</i> electrolysis of salt water produces caustic soda and chlorine and in <i>theory</i> if you mix these two and add more water you get bleach, but in reality no one's tested Orochimaru's method so we'll call this one artistic licence and roll with it.</p><p>Just. Don't try it at home, kids.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Same no Sasuke: Sharingan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>ReiLossefalme asked: where did her sharingan go and where did she get normal eyes from?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey, what happened to your eyes?” Deidara asks, squinting as he gets in her face with no regard for personal space. “The creepy peepers, I haven’t seen you use them in ages. Where’d they go?”</p>
<p>“I fed them to the sharks,” Sasuke answers blithely. “They were hungry and I didn’t have any other snacks.”</p>
<p>“You used them as <em>snacks?</em>”</p>
<p>She nods, and pushes at his forehead with a finger of chakra to move him back to a more reasonable distance. “Don’t worry,” she says when she sees his disturbed expression. “The new ones are just as creepy, I promise.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Why is Deidara bothering me about what my summons eat?” Kisame asks.</p>
<p>“How should I know? It’s Deidara.”</p>
<p>He levels her an unimpressed look. “He wants to know what snacks they like so he’s never caught short and has to feed them a body part instead.”</p>
<p>Sasuke tilts her head. “Huh. That’s surprisingly forward thinking of him.” Kisame’s look unimpresses further, but there’s a quirk to his lips that he can’t quite hide. She doesn’t know why he tries, they both know he finds it easier to be amused than to worry, but she indulges him all the same. “He wanted to know what happened to my sharingan,” she says. “I guess I didn’t explain it very well.”</p>
<p>“Ah.” There’s a pause, then, “Did you actually give them to the sharks?”</p>
<p>It’s her turn to level him with an unimpressed look. “No of course not,” she huffs. “I put them in a hanky and hid them under my pillow for the eye fairy, what else would I do with them.”</p>
<p>He grins and holds his hands up for peace. “They’re your eyes,” he reminds her. “Do what you like.”</p>
<p>“Damn straight,” she agrees, and sticks her tongue out when he laughs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Sasu-<em>ke!</em>” Tobi announces, flinging himself into the seat next to her with an overly dramatic sprawl. Sasori removes himself to a prudent distance, but doesn’t actually leave the room. There is a minute possibility - barely worth considering, but there all the same - that he’s losing patience with Sasuke for keeping Gaara hidden and has decided to shadow her until she slips up on where he currently is. Either that or he’s gained a sudden spiritual connection to the kitchen, but given that Sasuke’s pretty sure he runs on motor oil instead of food, the Gaara thing seems the most likely explanation. “Tobi heard you took your <em>eyes</em> out!”</p>
<p>“I didn’t,” she corrects. “They fell out by themselves. It happens when you get old enough, like baby teeth.”</p>
<p>He ignores that. It’s not fair, Sasuke thinks; someone as childish as Tobi should be an easy target for, um, creative interpretations of the truth. Except that he never actually believes her the way that Gaara or Deidara do - not that she’d ever mislead Gaara like that, that would be unkind.</p>
<p>Deidara, though. She convinced him once that his food was alive and that stomach cramps were from it trying to fight its way out before he could digest it. He went to Sasori to check, and Sasori didn’t listen that closely before confirming that yes, mould was technically alive and it would make Deidara sick if he ate it. It was brilliant. Deidara boiled <em>cereal</em> to ensure it was good and dead and not going to hurt him, then stabbed it a few times with a kunai for good measure. For an entire <em>week</em> until someone set him straight, and Sasuke’s pretty sure he’s still wary of rice.</p>
<p>“Why would you take your eyes out?” Tobi insists, bringing her attention back to the present. “What if you forget where you put them? Did you give them to someone? You can’t give people eyes, you’ll make them go weird!”</p>
<p>“I won’t forget,” she tells him. “I implanted them in a crow and made someone swallow it so it wouldn’t fly away. It was pretty memorable.”</p>
<p>“A <em>crow</em>,” he wails. “You can’t give them to a crow!”</p>
<p>“She didn’t,” Sasori cuts in, monotone. “A crow’s skull is too small. The eyes wouldn’t fit.” He tilts his head, and adds, “Unless Crow is a codename, though forcing someone to swallow a black ops member seems outside her usual methods.”</p>
<p>“Yuck,” Sasuke says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Actual crow. As in, bird.” She pauses, considers, then shudders. “Not that that makes it much better to be swallowed, ergh. Also, fair point on the eyeball size. I never thought of that.”</p>
<p>“So,” Tobi says hesitantly. “Not a crow?”</p>
<p>“No no, there was definitely a crow. And it definitely got swallowed. I think.” Her memory of canon is hazy at best, but she’s pretty sure the crow was a thing. She hums, considering, then shrugs. “Magic? It has to reappear at a crucial moment for plot purposes, so it’s still alive despite the swallowing thing. Magic’s as good an explanation as any.”</p>
<p>Sasori shoots her a disparaging look and turns away, interest lost now he knows she’s bullshitting again.</p>
<p>“Don’t dismiss me,” Sasuke accuses. “My words are pearls before swine, you might miss something important.”</p>
<p>“Now there are <em>pigs?</em>” Tobi asks, and slumps back in dejected defeat. “Sasuke’s poor eyes, how could Tobi let this happen to them.”</p>
<p>She pats him awkwardly on the arm. “My new ones let me see in the dark,” she says. “They’re still pretty cool.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Later, when Sasuke’s managed to shake Sasori for the afternoon, Tobi reappears. He’s more serious now that it’s just the two of them and Sasuke offers him a petulant scowl in lieu of hello.</p>
<p>Obito’s complicated. On the one hand, he’s family. On the other, she went to him when Itachi died and asked him to make her forget, and he didn’t. This may have been better for her in the long run. She may also not have forgiven him for it yet.</p>
<p>Also he hasn’t actually <em>told</em> her that he’s Obito, so she’s not sure what she’s meant to know and what she isn’t, and if he’s not going to trust her with his secrets then she feels no need to trust him with hers. Being family only gets you so far in life.</p>
<p>“They aren’t where anyone’s going to take them from me,” she says, skipping the preamble.</p>
<p>He slowly lowers himself to sit next to her on the ground, picking up one of the shuriken she’s sharpening and grabbing a whetstone to help. “You’re sure?” he asks. “They’re too valuable to risk.”</p>
<p>“No, really? I just chucked them in the bin, you’re telling me I could’ve sold them?”</p>
<p>“Sasuke.”</p>
<p>“Tobi,” she returns, mimicking his serious tone. “Go be a concerned parent somewhere else, I’m good thanks.”</p>
<p>“A concerned - <em>how</em> old do you think I am?”</p>
<p>“Ancient. Tobi-jii-chan. Is that why you’re so weird around everyone else, you keep going senile all the time?”</p>
<p>He doesn’t rise to that, because he’s an ass and he continues to not let Sasuke have any fun in life. Although, he convinced Itachi he was Madara, didn’t he? Maybe he doesn’t mind her thinking he’s ancient, if he’s trying to pull something similar on her.</p>
<p>“What did you do with them?” he presses.</p>
<p>She chews her lip. “I spent them,” she finally says. Some techniques work like that. Danzo’s izanagi - or, the izanagi Danzo had stolen - cost an eye each time he used it to reset his death, though his spent eyes were milky and blind rather than just eternally black.</p>
<p>“Ah.” To his credit, Obito doesn’t ask for details. “Was it worth it?”</p>
<p>“Have you seen my brother around?” she shoots back, and pushes herself restlessly to her feet. “When are we getting another mission?” she asks, changing the subject. “I’ve been here forever, I forgot what sunlight looks like.” And, she wants to get back to Gaara. She and Kisame are still part of Akatsuki, they still have to show their face around the mountain base every now and then, but even if Kisame doesn’t seem to mind the downtime Sasuke would much rather be out where she can set her own agenda.</p>
<p>Within the parameters of the missions she’s given, of course. Pein’s willing to be lenient - she thinks he still sees her as Itachi’s little sister rather than a full member of the team - but there’s a limit to how far she’s allowed to go.</p>
<p>“Why are you asking me?” Obito asks, collecting the shuriken and whetstones she’s left on the floor and stacking them neatly to the side. “I’m not the one in charge of them.” Which is a lie, Obito’s in charge of everything, but it’s a lie that falls under the things Sasuke isn’t sure she’s meant to know so she rolls her eyes at him and lets it slide. “We could spar, if you’re bored,” he offers.</p>
<p>“You can check how well I fight without my sharingan, you mean. Don’t pull that face, Jiji. I don’t need a fancy bloodline to see right through you, and I don’t need it to make you beg for mercy either.”</p>
<p>“Go easy on an old man,” he says dryly, then loosens his posture and slips back into Tobi’s higher pitch as they venture out into more public areas in search of a training room. “And don’t be mean, Sa-chan! Tobi’s just looking out for his friend, he’s worried for you!”</p>
<p>“<em>Worried -</em> Tobi’s going to <em>eat</em> his damn worry, I could take you any time -”</p>
<p>“We’re not allowed to fight in the corridor! Sasuke, wait, Tobi’s not allowed to - <em>eep!</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kakuzu only cares enough to check, “Will your lack of sharingan incur any additional costs or add any delay to your mission completion?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t actually lose them,” she tells him earnestly. “I just got a really good genjutsu to hide them and thought it was funny to pretend.”</p>
<p>“You were a poor investment choice,” he replies, and hands her a mission scroll.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She doesn’t see Pein before she goes - she rarely does, to be honest - but Konan makes the effort to speak to her, shooing Deidara off to give them some privacy.</p>
<p>Sasori is no less suspicious of her than he was before. He’s just also got a time-sensitive project on the go in what Sasuke affectionately calls his mad inventor lab, and he’s sub-contracted tailing her to his partner. Deidara takes to his duties with the enthusiasm of a film noir private eye, and Sasuke takes extra care to give furtive glances to dark corners and scratch indecipherable runes on the walls wherever she goes.</p>
<p>Konan turns to her with a guarded expression when the paper doll she sent after Deidara comes back to confirm that he’s gone. “Sasuke,” she starts. “Your eyes.”</p>
<p>“I swapped them round,” Sasuke says boredly. “Except I put them back in upside down, and I can’t be bothered to fix them.”</p>
<p>“I’m not interested in where they are now,” Konan says, frowning. “I wanted to check that no one took them from you against your will.”</p>
<p>Sasuke stills. She doesn’t know Konan well. She’s usually hanging around Pein, and Sasuke usually tries not to be, they rarely overlap.</p>
<p>“What would you do if they did?” she asks cautiously. “I have replacement eyes. I like my replacement eyes. I don’t want you to get the old ones back.”</p>
<p>“If you don’t want them back, that’s your choice,” Konan says. “But Sasuke, you’re part of Akatsuki. You’re not just your brother’s tagalong, you’re one of us and we look after our own.”</p>
<p>“‘Our own’ is a motley crew of criminals who would sell their mothers to satan for a single corn chip,” Sasuke points out. It doesn’t translate particularly well, but if Konan’s not used to the fact that Sasuke rarely makes sense that’s Konan’s fault for not paying attention.</p>
<p>As it is, Konan gets the gist of it, and the way she tightens her control of her expression betrays that she knows and doesn’t like it but has to work with what she’s got. “No one’s perfect,” she allows. “And no one’s irredeemable. We’re working towards something important and you’re part of that, if someone’s targeting you then you should know that you can come to us for help.”</p>
<p>There’s a pause. It’s never particularly light and breezy in the mountain to begin with, but the shadows seem heavier than usual as Sasuke considers her words.</p>
<p>“Some people are irredeemable,” she says finally, but doesn’t elaborate on who. “The next time someone steals my eyes I’ll let you know. I don’t think it’ll be a problem though, no one seems interested in the ones I have now. Which is stupid of them. These ones glow in the dark, they’re awesome.”</p>
<p>It’s clearly not the answer Konan was looking for, but she nods all the same and accepts it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Four days later, well and truly out of Rain and back on the road where she belongs, Sasuke stretches out the kinks in her spine and decides they’re finally far enough away for Gaara to rejoin them.</p>
<p>“Wait here,” she tells Kisame distractedly, frowning in concentration as she probes a nearby river for a suitable spot to jump off from. A lake would be easier, but lakes are in short supply, and the river’s running a bit too fast for even the tides to keep pace.</p>
<p>Well. For the nice tides. Some tides are insane, but Sasuke doesn’t fancy throwing herself into those.</p>
<p>“I could come with you,” he offers, unslinging Samehada from his back to lean on it. “I’m hardly going to rat out your hiding place.”</p>
<p>“No, you’ll try and hit Naruto with your sword and I promised him I wouldn’t let you do that,” Sasuke says, and finally finds an eddy that she likes. She steps into it without giving Kisame a chance to respond and reaches through her connection to the sea; the silty water turns clear and dark around her as the sun disappears from overhead, and her hair floats around her face in the current. She sinks down, deeper than the river would have allowed her to, and stretches out her hands to feel through the water as she goes.</p>
<p>She’s wearing Itachi’s Akatsuki cloak today. Being back in Rain always makes her nostalgic for it, and it flares out behind her as she swims, the bubble glowing blue over the surface to make sure it doesn’t drag her back with its weight. Not that she puts much effort into swimming; she could, but time works differently this far down, and she’ll get to the same place however fast she goes.</p>
<p>When she pulls herself out the water her hands find the smooth porcelain of the edge of a bath, and she wrinkles her nose at the lukewarm temperature. “You have no understanding of the concept of luxury,” she accuses, pitching her voice to be heard in the adjoining room.</p>
<p>There’s a crash, then Naruto yelping in surprise, “<em>Sasuke?</em>”</p>
<p>“Were you leaving the full bath for someone else to crawl out of? Oh god. Tell me you left it there for me and didn’t just forget to pull the plug. A cold bath is bad, a cold <em>used</em> bath is revolting.” She steps onto the tiled floor - no bath mat, Naruto you heathen - and shakes the last of the wet off her bubble before dispelling it. Her hair’s damp, as are the ends of her sleeves because she likes feeling the sea against her hands, but the rest of her is mostly dry.</p>
<p>“We left it for you,” Gaara assures her as she comes into the main room, standing up to greet her. He doesn’t smile, but she can read his expression enough to see that he’s pleased to see her, and she smiles back as she subtly checks him over. “It was hot, but the hotel asked us to stop using so much water so we couldn't keep refreshing it to make it stay that way.”</p>
<p>“Seriously?” She turns to Naruto with a pout. “What kind of cheap-ass establishments are you staying in?”</p>
<p>“He wanted to leave the tap permanently running,” Naruto explains, still somewhat wide-eyed from Sasuke’s abrupt arrival. “I had to tell Ero-sennin he was from Suna and didn’t understand how they worked. Did you actually crawl out the bath? Can you crawl out of <em>any</em> bath? How did you know which one was ours?”</p>
<p>“ESPN,” Sasuke tells him. “ESN? ESP? I forget. I have skills. I also have to go, I left Kisame by a river and told him to wait, he’ll get bored if we take too long.”</p>
<p>Naruto’s face falls. “Now?” He asks, looking around the twin room to avoid letting too much of his disappointment show. At least - to avoid making it seem like he’s letting too much of his disappointment show, and Sasuke squints suspiciously. He’s probably not trying to guilt trip her into staying. He’s probably just going to miss having Gaara around. She knew they’d get on, and it’s good for Gaara to have a wider support network than just her and Kisame.</p>
<p>“We were going to go to the deer forest,” Gaara says neutrally, and there, called it. They’re best friends now, Sasuke’s brilliant. “They bow when you feed them. They’re very polite.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the pair of them, Sasuke can’t be guilt tripped. She’s immovable. Free spirited. On a schedule.</p>
<p>“They have bao buns,” Naruto adds. “And custard dorayaki, you’d like them. I promised you not-ramen, you can’t leave without letting me follow through.”</p>
<p>“<em>Custard?</em> Dorayaki comes with bean paste, what are you - Gaara, don’t listen to him. He’s wrong. I regret leaving you two together, he’s a bad influence and you’re easily led astray.”</p>
<p>“They had other flavours,” Gaara assures her, rocking back on his heels in satisfaction. “I was going to try chocolate.”</p>
<p>Sasuke mutters a swear word and favours Naruto with one of her best bitch faces. “Stop teaching him to manipulate people,” she says. “No, wait. Keep teaching him to manipulate people, stop teaching him to manipulate me.”</p>
<p>“No manipulation,” Naruto promises, lifting his hands. “If you have to go you have to go, I know that. I’m not going to try and stop you.”</p>
<p>She holds her look, but he’s being honest, and she relaxes as she realises it. Trusting Naruto with most things comes easily - she wouldn’t have left Gaara with just anyone while she and Kisame went back to Akatsuki - but trusting him, trusting <em>anyone</em> not to take her back to Konoha, that’s different. As much as Naruto means to her she also hasn’t seen him for more than a few hours total since they were kids, she can hardly be blamed for being cautious.</p>
<p>“I was looking forward to the deer though,” Gaara says, because he’s also honest, and shameless to boot, and Sasuke throws her hands up and pouts.</p>
<p>No respect. That’s what she gets for being nice all the time. No respect at all.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The chocolate dorayaki, it turns out, come with bananas, which isn’t as bad as Sasuke thought. Other options are apricot jam, which isn’t traditional but is an acceptable deviation, the standard red bean paste, custard - how dare they - and, of all things, cream cheese.</p>
<p>She ignores the last two. Tries the chocolate, but isn’t a fan, decides that apricot is the way forwards in life, and makes Naruto get her a spare one to take back as an apology to Kisame for making him wait. They eat the rest on a small hill, the leaf-litter strewn bank sloping down to a quiet lake ringed with trees that the deer pass through in small groups.</p>
<p>Gaara has a stack of crackers to feed them. He holds himself very still, hands out perfectly flat with the cracker balanced on top, and waits for the deer to bow before offering it for them to eat.</p>
<p>“What are you going to do if they find out he’s with you?” Naruto asks, leaning back on his hands and cocking his head at her. “I know Kisame’s not bothered, but.”</p>
<p>“But what?” Sasuke says, raising an eyebrow. She shakes her head and turns to face forwards again, watching Gaara be steadily surrounded and use his sand to make sure each deer had equal access to food. “I’m not being careless,” she says. “I didn’t rescue him from Suna to leave him in danger from someone else.” She draws her knees up and rests her chin on them. “If you hadn’t let him stay with you, I had other plans.”</p>
<p>“And what about you?”</p>
<p>“What about me?”</p>
<p>“If they discover you betrayed them?”</p>
<p>She frowns at that, but still keeps her gaze forward. “I haven’t betrayed them,” she corrects. “You escaped by yourself, and it’s not my job to bring Gaara in.”</p>
<p>“You know they won’t see it that way.”</p>
<p>“And <em>you</em> know you don’t have to worry so much. I managed fine before you found me, I’ll be fine after as well.”</p>
<p>He’s quiet at that, but there’s a shuffling as he shifts to a different position and dislodges a small shower of soil. It collects pebbles and bits of twig as it tumbles down to splash in the edge of the lake, sending out a cascade of tiny ripples where it disrupts the water.</p>
<p>“I want not to worry,” he finally says. “But - Sasuke, do you realise how much of a big deal it is that you’re alive?”</p>
<p>“No. I just flipped a coin and decided on a whim. It <em>matters</em> now?”</p>
<p>He must know she’s being sarcastic, but he answers it seriously all the same. “Yes. <em>Yes,</em> god Sasuke. When we thought you died - and the fact that you didn’t, that everything was happening to you and none of us knew?”</p>
<p>“You weren’t meant to know,” she says, digging her chin further into her knees and still refusing to look round. “Danzo was good at what he did. I don’t blame you for it.”</p>
<p>“No, I know - that’s not what I meant. I just.” He pauses, and takes a breath. “You were my first precious person,” he admits. “If you say you’ll be fine, then I have to trust you, but you can’t expect me not to worry.” He shifts again, like he wants to get closer but is nervous of crossing some invisible line and making her back away. “You’re important, Sasuke.”</p>
<p>She snorts at that, and finally turns her head towards him. “I’ve been important all my life,” she says, uncurling her knees and sitting back in a way that casually leaves their shoulders touching. A thought occurs to her, and she perks up. “Oh, except I’m not now, I forgot. Can you tell Jiraiya I’ve not got the sharingan anymore? Not that I think it’s his fault, but Orochimaru had to steal his intel from somewhere and the timing was pretty coincidental.”</p>
<p>“Bastard,” Naruto complains. “Do you <em>like</em> casually dropping big revelations on me like that? What does Orochimaru have to do with anything, is he after you now?”</p>
<p>“No,” Sasuke explains patiently. “Because I don’t have a sharingan. I just said.” Also because she set her sharks on him and destroyed whichever host body he was currently using, but seeing as she doesn’t actually know how his links to his cursed seals work or how long it’ll take him to come back, she refrains from mentioning that particular bit.</p>
<p>“What’s a sharingan?” Gaara asks, rejoining them now that he’s run out of crackers.</p>
<p>“An eye dojutsu I was born with. It’s good that I don’t have it anymore, I promise. It drives people mad and it was making my brother go blind.”</p>
<p>He looks alarmed at that, and Sasuke stifles a wince as she remembers Gaara’s own problems with a somewhat tentative grip on sanity. “But now it’s gone, you won’t go mad or blind?” he checks.</p>
<p>She hesitates. She doesn’t lie to Gaara. On the other hand, she does lie to everyone else, herself sometimes included. She’s not sure where that leaves her on her answer.</p>
<p>Other than wishing Gaara had asked when Naruto wasn’t there.</p>
<p>“Not today,” she settles for. “No one can promise forever, but I’m not planning on it any time soon.” She shakes her head, annoyed, and amends, “I’m not planning on it at all, but I can’t predict the future.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know if you’ll have to reactivate them,” Naruto summarises, and Sasuke blinks at him in surprise.</p>
<p>“Reactivate what?” she asks. “These? I found these by the side of the road. They don’t have anything to reactivate. They’re actually just onigiri shaped to look like eyes. The black parts are nori stips, I’m using chakra to pretend to be able to see.”</p>
<p>“They’re your original eyes,” he says, shooting her a lopsided grin. “They look black but there’s a tiny bit of red when the sun catches them, it’s the same as you’ve always had.”</p>
<p>She stares. He shrugs, and Gaara nods at the explanation, and Sasuke might be therapied but the sharks didn’t prepare her for this.</p>
<p>“On that note,” she says, only slightly strangled, “Gaara and I really have to go. Thanks for the buns, stop putting custard in dorayaki, if you visit the sea I’ll try to come find you.” </p>
<p>She stands up, tugging at her cloak to brush off the dirt and straighten it, and starts walking backwards towards the lake.</p>
<p>“Wait - you’re going just like that? Which sea? How do I let you know?”</p>
<p>“Any sea.” She came through a <em>bath</em> that morning, she’s clearly not fussy about her water, and she’s rattled enough that she adds that, “Sharks are really good at smelling blood,” which is objectively true but also not a hint she meant to drop.</p>
<p>“Bye,” Gaara says, waving at Naruto as she wraps him in her bubble and they fall back into the lake. She sees Naruto with a hand half-raised to wave back before the dark closes over them and they’re gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>ESPN: Something to do with football<br/>ESP: Extra sensory perception<br/>The method Sasuke uses to choose the right bath tub to emerge from: Neither of the above</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Sasuke and Shadows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sasuke's got the brain and the potential for the ruthlessness needed for darker work. After the chunin exams Kakashi draws back from his team and Sakura and Naruto draw back from him; Sasuke is left in the middle and vulnerable for Danzo to exploit.</p>
<p>She's too old to brainwash, but he's not looking for a mindless puppet. He thinks she'll be easy to control.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter is based on a ficlet by the lovely ReiLossefalme over on the discord, which I've copied down into the end notes so you can read the original. It also contains main fic spoilers up to chapter 32 (latest chapter as of posting), and is set in the same canon as Chapter 6: Sai and his ink-best koi, but the tone is different enough that I haven't put them together as a series tag.</p>
<p>Also canon timeline note: I'm not sure exactly when Mei rebelled against the Mizukage, but I'm pretty sure I've moved it a year or so later in this. Roll with it, it works.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Let’s start again.</p>
<p>When Sasuke's seven, Danzo holds a knife to his throat and uses him as leverage. There is no physical knife. There doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t change the fact that Itachi trades his clan for his brother's life and blames himself for what he’s done.</p>
<p>When Sasuke's seven, he wakes up in hospital and knows that he’s a hostage. He lives surrounded by enemies, even if not all of them realise it, and his only protection is that they don’t know he hates them. He lies, every day, with his actions and his words and the way he ducks his head and falls in line, and he knows that if his dishonesty is caught he’ll die for it.</p>
<p>Dying for it is only one of the things that could happen. Sasuke tries not to dwell.</p>
<p>But; he lies. That’s the important point. Age twelve he’s put on a team, and he forms a plan, and the heart of it is another lie: he will pretend to be loyal and pretend to care and when they’ve decided he’s not a threat he’ll leave them behind and run. He hasn’t forgotten that he’s a hostage. If he can just escape the knife that’s being held to his throat, he thinks, his brother will be free.</p>
<p>It doesn’t quite work like that. Of course it doesn’t, you know it doesn’t, you read the story and you saw how it went. Sasuke starts by squinting at Kakashi in distrust but by the time the chunin exams roll round he looks up at Kakashi in relief and lets himself feel safe again. He starts annoyed at Naruto, wrinkling his nose and trying to shoo Sakura away, but it’s Sakura he can finally admit he’s a girl to and Naruto she reaches for when she says that she’s afraid.</p>
<p>Chouji she fusses over in hospital. Shikamaru she goes to when Kakashi’s not there, and asks if he knows where her sensei is. Urushi she drops her hand down to, burying her fingers in the coarse hair at the back of his neck and reminding herself that he’s still with her, Gaara she seeks out when the world is too much and she wants ice cream and a moment to catch her breath.</p>
<p>Ino, in time, when she wants to be carefree and paint her nails a glittery pastel rainbow only to ruin the finish by burying her hands in the dirt. It takes Ino a while to know where she’s meant to fit but she finds it in the end, and Sasuke tears down the main room of her house where her parents died and replaces it with a greenhouse that Ino redesigns for her seven times before she’s happy with it. It grows the sort of flowers you cut for vases, offensively colourful, cluttered in patterned pots and spilling over messy and bright. None of them are poisonous.</p>
<p>And earlier: Haku, who saw Sasuke as the rare kind of ninja who wanted to be kind. Zabuza, who recognised that Sasuke saved Haku’s life and thought him an idiot for it, but who refuses to let his debts go unpaid. Inari, and through Inari Tazuna, and at the chunin exams there’s Karin spitting swear words and unwilling to back away, Temari watching with wary eyes as her little brother starts to grow, Kankuro wanting nothing to do with anything but unable to stop himself being caught up in the change.</p>
<p>Sai, in the garden, watching with the koi fish even if Sasuke doesn’t know he’s there.</p>
<p>Danzo.</p>
<p>Sasuke collects people without realising it and when they're hers, she digs her fingers in and refuses to let them go. Hinata is not one of hers, not really, but the war she causes takes Kakashi away, and Sasuke rebels.</p>
<p>Naruto and Sakura distance themselves from Kakashi and Sasuke rebels again. Pakkun leads them to Jiraiya who Kakashi wanted to leave them with, and Sasuke bares her teeth and fights. Fights what, she doesn’t know; she still lies - her sharingan are hidden behind genjutsu, there’s an ANBU mask in her house that she used to threaten the Kazekage, she wears a Konoha headband like she doesn’t remember what they did - but there’s a limit to what lies can do and she isn’t strong enough for the battles she needs to win.</p>
<p>“There is someone who can help,” Sai promises, and Sasuke watches him warily and pretends she doesn’t see the trap.</p>
<p>“There isn’t a trap,” Danzo chides her when she comes to him. He’s been careful - he’s had to be, he already lost Sai and he knows it. If he’d tried anyway to order Sai to bring Sasuke to ROOT, Sai would have found a way to fail. But if instead he pushed Sai, gently, subtly, until Sai chose on his own to reveal himself to Sasuke and Sasuke blinked her way through her shock and decided to claim him as one of hers? If he led Sai, step by hidden step and it’s <em>hard</em> to guide a tool to think for themselves and still reach the conclusions you want them to reach but Danzo is good at what he does, if he led Sai until Sai believed he had what Sasuke was looking for, until Sai led Sasuke not to Danzo but to the resources she needs to get Kakashi back?</p>
<p>Sasuke lifts her head to look Danzo in the eye, mouth drawn tight and jaw clenched shut against the feelings she doesn't want him to see. “I believe you,” she lies. “Tell me where my sensei is.”</p>
<p>Danzo smiles. With the feather-touch of a master showing his apprentice the way, his answer is a collection of truths that weave a tighter web than lies ever could.</p>
<p>To Konoha, Sasuke becomes a civilian. Jiraiya couldn’t fix her arm, and though it’s not impossible for a shinobi to overcome the disadvantage, she’s young enough that it makes as much sense for her to retrain and start her life afresh. She choses politics, becoming the Uchiha clan head in action as well as in word. She wears swishy skirts and billowing hakama that are impractical to fight in and she plants flowers in her garden and lets the poisons die. Sai moves in to one of the abandoned clan houses. So does Karin. A ginger-haired Yamanaka who was thought to be dead, though he is careful not to be seen; a boy with insects in his spine who gave himself to ROOT so his cousin could stay free.</p>
<p>Torune is not so far gone as some of Danzo’s soldiers. He remembers his family, and Sasuke adds Shino to her list once she has him, and with Shino comes Kiba, who glances down at Urushi and lets himself believe that a dog is a good enough judge of character to trust.</p>
<p>Not Hinata. Hinata abandoned Konoha and was declared a missing nin for it. She didn’t last long by herself; the life of a missing nin is dangerous, and her eyes were too good a prize to ignore. No one knows who took them but Kurenai cried when she learnt Hinata was dead.</p>
<p>Tenzo: Danzo gives her Kakashi back and Sasuke slots herself in as his partner like it was a role she was always born to fill. ANBU Hound is cold, hard where Kakashi let himself be soft, unflinchingly loyal as though it would make up for all the times he failed. ANBU Hound followed Konoha because Minato was Konoha, then he followed Danzo because Danzo promised him his team would be safe. It’s not difficult to make him follow Sasuke instead.</p>
<p>He’d already been teaching her his assassin’s taijutsu. Go in fast, hit once and escape, don’t be caught and don’t be seen; they work well together. She is fast and sneaky and genjutsu was always best suited to the shadows, he is faster and deadly and he both refuses to let her be hurt and trusts her to keep him alive in turn.</p>
<p>“There is a balance to be found,” Danzo teaches her. “If they fear you but don’t love you, they’ll rebel. If they love you but don’t fear you, they will act on what they think is right and not what you need them to do.”</p>
<p>“What if I love them back?” Sasuke retorts, and steals Tenzo from the Hokage and Danzo both because it makes Kakashi happy to have him near.</p>
<p>It’s difficult, loving them back. She keeps Kakashi away from Naruto and Sakura because she thinks it would hurt him to know that they abandoned him, but when Naruto and Sakura choose Jiraiya and make to leave, Sasuke has to let them go. She doesn’t want to. If she didn’t love them, perhaps she wouldn’t have to, but she sees how much it means to them and she grits her teeth against herself and smiles as she waves them goodbye. They think she stays because she’s civilian now. She’s committed to her position as the clan head, helping Konoha recover after the war against Sound was won, investing the Uchiha funds in civilian businesses and chipping away at the monopoly the other clans hold. Some of them realise what she’s doing, but she has most of the clan heirs by now. Through Danzo, she even has some of the clan heads, though it’s not an advantage she advertises. Some of the civilians realise what she’s doing as well, and she adds them to her people and settles over them like a watchful dragon guarding her hoard. Business owners; those she lends money to, makes suggestions, puts them in touch with other people she owns and encourages them to help each other out. Wealthy families; those she gives political voice to, using her seat and her clan’s age to make the changes they’ve been asking for for years. Poor families; those she gives houses to, opening the Uchiha district, finding them employment in her growing empire and asking only for their gratitude in return.</p>
<p>“Our role is to make Konoha strong,” Danzo says, spreading out a map and leaning over it with her. It shows Mist; more specifically, it shows the location of Terumi Mei’s resistance and the most likely path she’ll take to kill the Mizukage. He isn’t referring to Mist though when he adds, “Be careful not to alienate people with your side projects, or you risk losing sight of your goal.”</p>
<p>“Who says my side projects aren’t my goal?” Sasuke asks, frowning as she studies the map. “Here,” she finally says, pointing at a narrow gap between two islands that creates a rip tide between them. “They have to bridge it. If the Mizukage has any strategy, it’s where he’d lay a trap.”</p>
<p>“He has very little,” Danzo says neutrally, not bothering to hide the unimpressed lilt to his voice.</p>
<p>“He has enough that if there was a trap on the bridge, people would assume the Mizukage laid it,” Sasuke counters. “Without interference, Mei will win. The harder her victory is the weaker Mist will be when she takes it, and the more desperate for allies and aid.”</p>
<p>He smiles. “Good,” he praises. He doesn’t tell her to stick to water jutsu - he expects better of her than to make so basic a mistake. A purely water-based attack would be an obvious attempt to frame the Mizukage, she knows to mix in enough earth or wind to be believable. “When the revolution succeeds -”</p>
<p>“I have a different plan,” Sasuke interrupts. Mei is a wildcard, too strong to stay malleable for long, too committed to her village to ever be one of Sasuke’s. The Mizukage is a jinchuriki under the control of Obito’s sharingan, and Zabuza has shown in the past that he’s willing to change his mind when new information comes to light.</p>
<p>When she goes to him, she says, “Naruto’s a jinchuriki too. I was keeping tabs on Akatsuki to protect him.”</p>
<p>Zabuza is suspicious of her. That’s ok; she was expecting him to be. “And you learnt about Yagura and decided to help out of the goodness of your heart?”</p>
<p>“She’s kind,” Haku reminds him.</p>
<p>“She’s black ops,” Zabuza shoots back. “What does Konoha get out of it?”</p>
<p>“There’s a trading port I’m invested in in Wave,” she says. “Water are keeping them out of the best fishing areas. I thought we could work something out.” She doesn’t correct his assumption that she’s ANBU. She’s not - as far as the Hokage’s concerned, she’s not even a ninja anymore - but ROOT is as much hers as Danzo’s now, and keeping it hidden is as much about keeping it safe as keeping it useful.</p>
<p>“That’s it?” Zabuza asks. He doesn’t look like he believes her. “You help us kick this Akatsuki out of Mist, we give you fishing rights, you’re done?”</p>
<p>“What can I say? I’m a food-motivated sort of person. Besides, we’re neighbours; isn’t it better that we get along?”</p>
<p>They do. In the end; it takes a while, and Sasuke has to withdraw some of the connections she was building to Wind in favour of redirecting her collection of businesses to helping revitalise Mist, but Gaara is enough of a friend that she can afford to put that project on hold. Underneath the mind control Yagura is soft spoken and guilt-stricken, torn between the need to repair the damage he’s done and the need to find Akatsuki and make them pay. He leaves the Kage position to Zabuza, and Zabuza stares at it in wary mystification and decides to make both Mei and Haku his advisors then step back and watch the show. He still has ideals, and the dedication to see a plan through once it’s begun, but running a village takes a careful touch that he’s still learning he can have, and it’ll be a while before he’s ready to lead without their help.</p>
<p>Sasuke can give him time. She was right that Mei will never be hers, but Mei’s a lot easier to deal with when Haku and Zabuza are there to balance her than when she’s a dangerous rebel acting alone.</p>
<p>Yagura's cautious when he comes to her - she is Uchiha, even if she still uses a genjutsu to hide her eyes - but he wants to keep Akatsuki out of Mist more than he wants to keep himself safe, and she is his only lead on how to do it. She pairs him with Tenzo and sends them first to track down Utakata, Mist’s other but now missing jinchuriki, and leaks Jiraiya’s notes to help them on their way.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t make me Konoha’s,” Yagura warns her. “A common enemy is a temporary truce. I'm still loyal to Mist.”</p>
<p>“Konoha is irrelevant,” she replies. “There are people I’m trying to keep safe, that’s all. A village is as good a tool as any to do it with.”</p>
<p>People she’s trying to keep safe. The Uchiha clan compound is now more than half occupied, and Danzo is losing ROOT to her at an ever growing pace. Gaara isn’t aiming for Kazekage but Temari is, and both of them are hers; she’s kept enough of an eye on Wave to ensure that Tazuna’s still in charge, and with Haku’s steadfast faith in her and Zabuza’s duty to his debts, she considers Water important enough to cultivate. It’s nothing to do with <em>owning</em> it, she doesn’t care if they love her or fear her or bend the knee when she asks them to; all she cares about is that there are two people in Mist that she likes and if she can help them in any way, she will.</p>
<p>If they help her back in turn - that’s what people do. There’s nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>Not all the ROOT nin who live in her compound stay ROOT nin. Only the ones that want to. One of the businesses she financed is a pond shop; it sells koi fish and offers maintenance and the people who staff it are quiet and somewhat odd, but the ponds they install are beautiful and their fish are always in perfect health.</p>
<p>But Konoha? It’s the reason Danzo fights, and because she needs Danzo she’s willing to make the pretence, but for all his experience there are things Danzo was never going to know. Ways he failed. Things he tried in the past but never succeeded at, assumptions he made that he was too confident in himself to be corrected on. He thinks that someone who fears him and loves him will be obedient to him. He thinks Sasuke still hasn’t realised how he used her life as leverage when her brother killed her clan.</p>
<p>Still; his confidence is not overconfidence, and he has no need for a successor who will turn against him. Orochimaru is easy enough to bait, still nursing his wounds from the war he lost, and Danzo does just enough to send him against the Hokage then stands back to watch what Sasuke does. Subtly, of course; it wouldn't be a fair test if she knew she was being graded on it. When she acts without question to save the Hokage's life he thinks it’s a sign of her loyalty to Konoha. He approves of the intent, even if it would have been useful for the Hokage to die so that he could lead in his stead, and he is satisfied when he learns that she has no ambition to take the hat for herself.</p>
<p>She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. That’s Naruto’s, and Sakura’s, and the only reason Sasuke keeps the Hokage alive is because she thinks Tsunade will make her life harder than it needs to be. Sarutobi should have stepped down and named another successor years ago but he didn’t, and he’s old and stuck in his ways and now he won’t, and why would she ever want to be Hokage herself when it’s so much easier to get what she wants from the shadows? He’ll die when Naruto’s ready. Sasuke will make sure he won't go too early, and then she'll make sure he doesn't go too late. It's simple enough to do.</p>
<p>Hiashi, though, he’s a thorn in her side. He thinks she’s too young to be a clan head, too radical, he doesn’t like her ideas; he thinks <em>someone’s</em> rigging the council meetings even if he doesn’t know who and the corruption is an insult he will not lightly bear. Hinata’s byakugan are destroyed - Sasuke doesn’t believe in eyeball transplants - so she can’t use that to control him; Hanabi has been made vicious and proud by the weight of being the heir and thinks very little of the Uchiha dropout who threatens their cloth trade with civilian competitors. Neji, perhaps, and Sasuke takes care to be at least on cordial terms with him, but that’s more because Tenten is important to Ino and Neji’s important to Tenten than for anything he’s done by himself. Outside of that she has no one, there <em>is</em> no one she can lean on to get her way. The Hyuuga are one of the four noble clans of Konoha, strictly hierarchical, and they don’t appreciate being overlooked. The other three are the Aburame - Sasuke’s - the Akimichi - not yet Sasuke’s, because with the Akimichi come the Nara and the Yamanaka and Inoichi-Shikaku-Chouza are a formidable defence that she respects their children too much to touch - and the Uchiha, but Sasuke is careful not to play her hand too obviously when her name is attached to it so she can’t always count on her own vote to go her way.</p>
<p>It leaves the council unbalanced. Bringing back the Hatake seat would help, but Kakashi wouldn’t like it, and even if he’d do it for her it’s not something she’s going to ask. Danzo votes with her when he thinks she’s doing what he tells her to, but his reach is slipping and Sasuke is invested in keeping him away from the plans she doesn’t want him to see. The Hokage can only overrule the council, he can’t vote himself, and it’s a power that comes with a very few uses that Sasuke doesn’t like spending unless she has to. She has a lot of the smaller clans and the civilian families but she’s careful not to hold them too tight because that would defeat the purpose of giving them a voice to begin with, and it leaves her frustratingly little leeway for some of the things she's trying to do.</p>
<p>So. The Hyuuga. They don’t like her, and Hiashi is smart enough to spot what she’s doing even when she’d rather he not. He seems not to know about ROOT, or if he does he gives no sign, but she’s suspicious of his ignorance. Danzo has had Hyuuga among his soldiers before. He knows that the byakugan can find their tunnels, and where he’s contented himself that the Hyuuga trust the Hokage and who they think are his ANBU by extension, Sasuke is not so sure. She watches them warily, not bothering with polite smiles because everyone who knows her knows she’s too open with her emotions to hide, and she keeps them from her people as best she can and lays the foundations for when her best is not enough.</p>
<p>Enough years have passed now: Naruto and Sakura come back, and the reunion is exactly as uplifting as it should be. They don’t ask after Kakashi - they haven’t seen him since before the war with Sound, they assume he died in it - and Sasuke tells them about her social engineering projects and how she’s finally got Suna to manufacture the quality of glass and stainless steel she needs to overhaul the hospital and the way her fish have grown under Sai’s determined care. She doesn’t mention the storm she caused in Mist that took out the weapons cache Mei was stockpiling, nor the throats she and Kakashi slit in Sand so Gaara didn’t have to know there were still people who saw him as an extension of Shukaku’s rage.</p>
<p>Nor Sound - she gave it to Karin when Orochimaru tried to kill the Hokage and failed again, and Karin gave her Suigetsu and Juugo in return. Juugo doesn’t yet know that Sasuke’s the one in charge because she doesn’t think he’d approve of what she did to get there, but Suigetsu’s happy enough to play along. Kabuto is dead. He died early, and painfully, and Sasuke sealed his head and his heart in iron boxes even before he’d stopped regenerating to make sure he never came back. Orochimaru is alive. They’ve reached a wary truce, one he thinks he made with Danzo, and Sasuke is happy to support his research if it leads him to a better solution than the sharingan for his problems. Besides; immortality isn’t something she wants for herself but there are people she doesn’t want to die. He’s useful to have around.</p>
<p>She doesn’t tell them about Cloud either. Yagura might have been under Obito’s command for a decade, but before then he was notable for achieving full control over his bijuu, by which Sasuke means that he worked with it as a sentient being rather than against it as a chakra battery. He and Tenzo found Utakata, and continued their work against Akatsuki by following Isobu’s directions to Killer Bee in Lightning. Yugito was a harder sell - though she trusted her bijuu well enough, Matatabi was less willing to trust her brothers - but they found Fuu by ROOT-assisted chance and she was desperate enough for acceptance that she easily fell in line.</p>
<p>There was a reason Sasuke chose Tenzo to be the one to go with them. His strength and his wood release were only part of it. Keeping his mokuton away from Danzo was another part, giving him the chance to see more of the world that he’d grown up hidden away from was a third; but the larger part was that he was honest. He connected to the jinchuriki he travelled with, meant it when he said his only goal was to see Akatsuki defeated. He genuinely wanted to help.</p>
<p>It’s gratifying, how much people trust someone who is honest, without ever questioning the agenda someone else might be using them for.</p>
<p>So Naruto and Sakura return. Sasuke has the majority of ROOT, and is slowly whittling away the remainder. She has Konoha, almost, and a Hokage waiting to die as soon as Naruto’s ready to take his seat. She has Sand, Wave, Sound, Mist; she has a roving band of jinchuriki working to take down Akatsuki and Cloud very firmly on their side. The Hyuuga are a thorn, but one she’s prepared to tolerate for as long as they help her keep her cover - she can’t make life too easy for herself or people will look for the ways she cheats. If they threaten ROOT, and by extension Kakashi or the people she uses ROOT to protect, then she has plans in place for them to go.</p>
<p>She considers, briefly, holding Hanabi hostage and asking Neji to kill his clan. She doesn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. But she considers it, as much to see if she can see what Danzo saw when he decided it was the plan he wanted to go with, and she finds it both too risky and too high a cost to be worth ever carrying through. Her plan is simpler, and it’s one inspired by the work she’s doing to bring more civilian doctors into the hospital and move healthcare away from always relying on chakra to fix things.</p>
<p>The Hyuuga are particular about their food. They don’t buy it from the market, or share it with anyone else. They don’t like Sasuke, and they refuse to use the connections she's made for Konoha with the neighbouring countries. They are too cautious to eat poison, and too sensible to eat food that’s gone off, but there are plenty of ways to kill someone slowly without being so crass as to be noticeable. Natural causes is such a wide ranging description. It seems a shame not to exploit it.</p>
<p>When the Hyuuga activate their byakugan, it puts so much strain on the blood vessels around their eyes that they bulge out beneath the skin.</p>
<p>Some of the older clan members have already started having strokes.</p>
<p>Perhaps it seems harsh, to set a plan in motion before the clan has gone so far as to deserve it. It’s not. It’s realistic. She wants to see how the Hyuuga react to Naruto as Hokage, and in the interim she’ll arrange things so that Neji at least is kept busy and rarely eats at home, but waiting until the Hyuuga need to die to start killing them will be too late: either they’ll take too long and cause too much trouble, or they’ll die too fast and the other clans will be suspicious. It, like everything else, is a balance, and if there are compromises to be made she’d rather not be the one to make them. But there’s no need to be hasty. She has time.</p>
<p>There’s one last person she needs, now that she has Team Seven back, and she dances the steps and weaves her lies and lets Danzo think it was his idea all along. He spots her lies, of course, and nods to himself with the indulgence of a master who’ll have a long time yet before their apprentice is a risk to them. Lies are blunt. The weak man’s weapon, fragile and easy to take apart. It’s <em>truths</em> that run the world. He knows this, and he holds fast to the ones he has and scatters parts of them like breadcrumbs to lead the village the way it deserves to be lead.</p>
<p>Itachi, he sends. Come home. There’s someone I want you to meet.</p>
<p>But Danzo. Danzo, it’s not truth that’s going to see you dead. Nor lies, and don’t you think Sasuke would have learnt by now that her lies were never going to catch you out? She’s learnt everything else so beautifully. You lead the parts of the village she lets you have while she rules <em>countries</em> and you don’t even see it, if lies were as weak as you say they are don’t you think she’d’ve found something better to use instead?</p>
<p>She’s been lying since she was seven years old and you held her hostage to force her brother to kill her clan.</p>
<p>“Aniki,” she says, stepping out of the shadows and ignoring the way Itachi stiffens when he sees her. “Don’t bow to him. He’s the reason our mother’s dead.”</p>
<p>“Careful,” Danzo warns, a lazy curl to his lips that says he’s amused rather than annoyed by her disobedience. “Don’t let your side projects distract you from your goal.”</p>
<p>“You have no idea what my goal is,” she promises him. There are four ROOT in the room aside from her and Itachi. Two more in the house, a further six standing guard outside it. Three of them are hers that Danzo pretends not to know about; he thinks it will give her the illusion of control. Five are hers that she pretends are his; it gives him the illusion of safety. The remaining four are his and if they are not already dead, they’re dying, and either way they weren’t given the chance to fight back.</p>
<p>Kakashi is too good at what he does to miss.</p>
<p>“Aniki,” she says again, still walking forwards, and she sees wariness in Danzo’s eyes when his bodyguards make no move to stop her. “His Izanagi won’t work in Tsukuyomi.”</p>
<p>Itachi holds himself still. He knows what she wants. Izanagi rewrites reality enough even to reset a person’s death; Tsukuyomi creates a new reality entirely under his control. He wonders, fleetingly, if it’s a test, if the new shadow leader of Konoha is using him to kill the old as a sign of her power over him, or if she genuinely believes she’s doing him a favour by allowing him to take his revenge.</p>
<p>He never thought it was his revenge to take.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to be used to kill people.</p>
<p>“Aniki,” Sasuke says for the third time, sharper, and there’s a ruthlessness to her that Danzo worked so hard to shape but beneath it all she’s his baby sister and she’s always been the weakness he cannot stand against.</p>
<p>“As you wish,” he says. When he turns he sees Kakashi and Sai forcing Danzo still where he can’t escape. He raises a hand, and his eyes spin red.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Quick reminder: if something's in a Surplus, that has absolutely no bearing on whether it'll be in the main fic or not. Kakashi may or may not have gone to ROOT. Hinata may or may not end up dead (actually I know several people are worried about that, and I promise I'm not the sort to go around needlessly killing characters for the hell of it). Konoha may or may not win the war against Sound. <strike>The only thing I'm going to say for certain is that Sai, I'm afraid, is not impersonating a fish in Sasuke's koi pond.</strike> (edit: nothing is certain, not even that) Everything else is secrets ;)</p>
<p>Original ficlet from ReiLossefalme:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Sasuke’s got the brain, and potentially the ruthlessness for darker work. Her team tears apart around her, Kakashi trying to distance himself because of his own issues, Naruto and Sakura liking the steadiness that Jiraiya provides, but Sasuke holds herself back. And eventually those ties strain. Jiraya wants to take the kids and Sasuke doesn’t understand why her pack is being INVADED and she DOESN’T TRUST HIM and is she going to be abandoned again? Sakura and Naruto don’t understand and they try to convince her and reassure her but they don’t understand why her teeth are bared and her eyes firmly hidden under glamour and mistrust.</p>
  <p>And she meets a boy who plays with her fish, who draws beautiful pictures of her koi, who can make them swim on their own and play in the water she has feared so much. And she knows who he is even though they’ve never met, but she feels safe around her fish when her whole world is shaking itself apart again. Then he brings an older man, and she knows who he is too, knows to fear him, but he sits by the pond quietly and talks gently with her. He wants her, yes, but she’s too old, too self-actualized, for his ROOT program. But he doesn’t only take in children, he has many who live throughout the village, who can bond to a cause, a person, an ideal, and do anything for it. This man had Kakashi for years, willing to do anything to assuage his grief and protect what little he had left. This man has Kakashi again, drowning in his own sense of failure.</p>
  <p>And he offers Sasuke a place to belong - training, yes, but family and belonging and a freedom from the fear he can see in her eyes. She knows he is dangerous to her, knows the things he can do, is too smart, too aware, and he knows it too. But if she is his, then she is no threat. If she is his, then her strengths will benefit his goals and his village and she can someday be the one to decide, to control the strings being pulled, to never have to fear that she will be the victim again.</p>
  <p>Of course he doesn’t know everything, she will never tell him everything, but he subtly saws at her connections to her team, stokes the fires of distrust against other potential authority figures, lets the arguments get larger and more out of control, while encouraging the boy who draws and some of his others to make connections with her. He encourages Kakashi to spend time near her, if even just from a tree while covered in the mask of a Hound - she knows he’s there anyways and takes comfort from it, lets it soothe her frazzled nerves after yet another fight with her team/pack/breaking/crumbling/what-is-left-to-fight-for...</p>
  <p>And at last it cracks. Sasuke and Naruto exchange blows, Sakura gets in between, and in the aftermath everything is broken. The company is broken and each walks their own way. </p>
  <p>Sasuke willingly goes to the comfort of  darkness, the new pack she has been folded into, and is apprenticed as successor to the great shadow.</p>
</blockquote>Plus addendum:<blockquote>
  <p>Poor Itachi, this would likely not be a happy Itachi story, though he’s always been loyal to Konoha, enough that he did murder his family for them. He could perhaps be brought back in, if he survived his assignment with Akatsuki. His sister would welcome him back, standing at the side of the man he loves and loathes in turns. He’s a good shinobi though, he’ll follow orders. Even the ones coming from his baby sister</p>
</blockquote>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Sasuke in Suna: Gaara (Shukaku) pt. 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Gaara learns. Gaara grows. By the time he sees Sasuke again, he feels almost like a person; he waits by the gates as she approaches with an excited anticipation to show her what he’s done.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This follows directly on from part one (chapter 16) and is now firmly in the Sasuke in Suna timeline. In terms of the other Suna ficlets, this covers the time period before, during, and shortly after the original Sasuke in Suna ficlet (chapter 3) but doesn't yet extend to Sasuke in Suna: Cats or Sasori (chapters 4 and 14). So no summons yet, I'm afraid!</p><p>There <i>may</i> be a part three. Maybe.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gaara doesn’t stop wanting. New things, different things; he wants the cautious interest his sister shows in him to continue, he wants the way his brother flinches away from him to stop. They leave Konoha and go back to Suna where he’s meant to be a blight, and then Sasuke’s instructions become even less helpful than before. The only person he can think of in Suna that she might like is him, but that doesn’t help him know who he is and isn’t allowed to kill.</p><p><em>Like you,</em> Mother repeats, scoffing. <em>She doesn’t like you. People lie. Just because she said it doesn’t mean she means it, people say anything if they think it’ll keep them alive.</em></p><p>“She wasn’t scared of me though,” Gaara says. He pauses, because the next bit he isn’t sure about. He knows what he wants - he wants someone to love him and finally heal the wound his uncle left - but he doesn’t know how to get it. His uncle never explained how it worked. Neither did Sasuke, and he thinks she might like him but she never said anything about love. She was fairly adamant actually that love was too complicated and she didn’t know much about it, but… “I don’t feel like I don’t exist when she’s around.”</p><p>
  <em>I do. You never gave me her blood. And she’s not around now, we should kill someone.</em>
</p><p>He frowns. It’s night again, like it usually is when the world goes quiet and he talks to Mother to stop his thoughts echoing, and the closest people to kill are Temari and Kankuro. He’s always been stopped when he’s tried killing them before, but he hasn’t tried for a while. He and Mother are stronger now.</p><p><em>The boy,</em> they press. <em>His puppet annoys me.</em></p><p>If Gaara kills his brother, his brother won’t be around to stop flinching when he looks at him. If Gaara kills his brother, his sister will retreat back to a frightened distance and stop trying to know who he is.</p><p>“No,” he decides. “Puppets don’t bleed, and I don’t want him to die. Choose someone else.”</p><p>They snarl their displeasure, but Gaara doesn’t let them out until they’re far enough from the house that his siblings are safe. This, he learns later, is not enough; if he wants his siblings to see him the way Sasuke had, if he wants them to be able to prove his existence without dying for it, then he has to do more than not kill them. He has to not kill <em>anyone</em>. In Suna, at least. It takes a lot of trial and error to learn this. He assumed at first that it would be anyone they liked, like it was with Sasuke, but it’s not. Then he tried anyone they knew, but even though they don’t know everyone in Suna, they still weren’t happy. He tried just killing the old like Mother suggested, then the weak or the sick or the ones that the village ignored and overlooked, and somehow that was worse.</p><p>“Tell me what I’m allowed to do,” he demands of Kankuro, cornering him in the kitchen where he can’t escape. Trial and error is slow, and difficult, and Mother is getting frustrated with the lack of blood.</p><p>Kankuro holds the coffee pot in front of himself like a useless attempt at a shield and shakes his head with wide eyes that skitter off over Gaara’s shoulder. “No. Absolutely not. Is this a trap? You do you. Whatever you want, I’m not going to stop you. Look at me, not stopping you, staying out of the way and not telling you you can’t do things, isn’t that nice of me.”</p><p>
  <em>Why are we keeping this one alive. He’s a mess.</em>
</p><p>“I’m not going to kill you,” Gaara says unhappily, directing it as much at Mother as at Kankuro.</p><p>“Genuinely, I’m thrilled, but also can I go?”</p><p>“No one’s killing anyone,” Temari says as she reaches around and steals Kankuro’s coffee. She brushes against Gaara as she does so, a faint, barely-there invasion of his personal space that looks casual but is actually tense and carefully controlled. She’s been testing his boundaries as much as he’s been trying to test hers, and she seems to have decided that physical contact is part of that.</p><p>Gaara can’t really feel it through his sand. Mother doesn’t like retracting his armour at the best of times, and Gaara’s been making enough changes recently that both of them are feeling on edge. It doesn’t feel worth it to fight them on it.</p><p>“Also, no,” Temari adds, frowning at Kankuro. “Family breakfast is a thing now, you can’t go. Why are you arguing?”</p><p>Kankuro takes the opportunity to work himself out from between Gaara and the counter and stand nearer the door, though he diplomatically doesn’t run through it and away like he clearly wants to. It makes Gaara scowl, and he crosses his arms in annoyance, scowling harder at the way that makes his brother freeze up and duck his head in fear.</p><p>“He won’t look at me,” he accuses. “I haven’t killed him, but he still acts like I will. He’s not <em>seeing</em> me.”</p><p>“In my defence,” Kankuro starts, twitchy and jittery and maybe Mother wants everyone to be afraid of them but that’s not the person Gaara decided to define himself as, except what’s the point of a definition if no one notices it’s there?</p><p>“And he won’t tell me what to do,” he continues, turning towards Temari and ignoring Kankuro. He sounds like a little kid, whining because it isn’t fair. In some ways, he is. He never went through that stage of growing up, and it’s difficult to learn how to interact with people when no one will take the time to teach him. “How am I meant to be his brother if he won’t tell me? I keep trying but I don’t <em>know.</em>”</p><p>“Wait, you <em>want</em> me to give you orders?”</p><p>“I want you to love me,” Gaara corrects. If he wasn’t so annoyed then the way Kankuro’s eyes snap to him would be gratifying. The disbelief in them, maybe not, but at least it’s <em>something</em>.</p><p>There’s a pause, heavy and silent. In the back of his head, Mother retreats. They always do when he brings up love, still disagreeing with him on its importance, but he can feel them still paying attention enough to listen. He looks to Temari instead, and she’s frowning like she’s trying to work things out, but she’s also leaning forwards encouragingly. “Why?” she asks, motioning Kankuro to keep his comments to himself. “A few months ago, you didn’t care.”</p><p>“No,” he says honestly. “Baki wouldn’t let me have your blood, so you didn’t matter.” Taking his cue from Temari, he ignores Kankuro’s muttered remarks in the background. “But I don’t want blood now.”</p><p>
  <em>Because you’re stingy and you hate me.</em>
</p><p>“I want…” He trails off. He’s never had to explain to anyone what his uncle taught him, and he doesn’t really know how to put it into words. He half-lifts a hand to his chest, towards where his heart is, but that’s not where he actually feels the pain. He feels it in his thoughts, in the cycling doubts that never go away, in the way he screams at the universe and no one ever screams back. He feels it in the way he’s been trying for months to define the way he exists, and Kankuro still refuses to see, so maybe Kankuro’s right and he doesn’t exist at all. He feels it in the way he <em>doesn’t</em> feel, in the faint scrape of sand over his skin that’s so familiar it doesn’t register anymore and the way the rest of the world is so removed from his ability to touch it that maybe <em>it</em> doesn’t exist, and what he wants is some nebulous cure-all that his uncle promised love would provide but that Sasuke thinks is too complicated to work and he doesn’t know which of them is right and he wants someone to tell him what to <em>do</em>.</p><p>“Sasuke’s brother tried to kill her,” he says, switching tactics to bring himself back to stable ground. “She still loves him. It’s what you’re meant to do with brothers, but you don’t, and I don’t know how to make you.”</p><p>“Sasuke?” Temari repeats. “The leaf genin, the one who forfeited her match?” Gaara nods, and she shares a look with Kankuro that Gaara can’t decipher. It goes on for longer than she wants it to if the stubborn crease to her forehead is any indication, but eventually Kankuro caves.</p><p>“Fucking leaf genin,” he mumbles. “How sure are we that she isn’t secretly mind controlling him? She sounds nuts. I don’t like her.”</p><p>“I’m not killing her for you,” Gaara says sharply, and Kankuro holds his hands up in the universal sign for peace that, at every other time in his life, Gaara has ignored. As part of the new person he’s building he chooses to pay attention this time, and nods in satisfaction instead.</p><p>“You can’t make people love you,” Temari says, the caution in her voice all but gone and replaced by decisive action. “They have to do it themselves. But if you’re looking for guidelines for how to act, then I can help you with those.”</p><p>Guidelines. Not instructions, but close enough, and now that he’s lost even Mother’s simple rules to live by, he’ll take what he can get. “Yes,” he agrees. “I want that.”</p><p> </p><p>The guidelines are simple at first, but the more Gaara presses the more Temari gives him, until she’s introducing him to the new concept of law and how order can keep a village together when people’s differing needs would otherwise tear it apart.</p><p>It’s <em>fascinating.</em> Gaara has never considered before how to deal with other people wanting things that he doesn’t. They usually want to live, and in the past he’s usually ignored them. Mother wants blood, and he’s getting increasingly good at ignoring that as well. Sasuke wanted a lot of things that seemed to be different to what Gaara wanted, but Gaara found a way to change himself so they both wanted the same things and then it worked, but that’s unique to Sasuke and he’s not going to do it for anyone else.</p><p>The village is something so much bigger than that. It feels like a living thing, one that can hurt just like anything else can hurt, and where bodies are healed by medicine and hearts are healed by love, the village is meant to be healed by law. The reason that Suna is blighted is not because of Gaara at all. It’s because the laws are wrong.</p><p>“This contradicts,” he tells Temari, frowning at a bill that claims to support retired jounin but actually works to put them out of sight and out of mind. And, another time, “This isn’t enough,” when he finds a budget for the orphanage that expects the number of children to be approximately half of what it is.</p><p>He knows how many children there are. When he was trying to only kill people his siblings wouldn’t miss, he got very good at finding the ones that had slipped through the cracks. He’s not trying to kill them now but he still knows where they are, and he knows that they’re hurting and they’re part of the village, and now he has a <em>purpose</em> for his knowledge. Instructions. Guidelines to define his life by, laws to define the village by, and finally he <em>understands.</em></p><p>“They’re all trying to exist,” he tells Mother, sat on the roof in the small hours of the morning when his siblings are both asleep. Kankuro is still nervous, but he’s better, and he dropped a scathing remark on Baki when Baki didn’t realise that Gaara had changed. Temari isn’t nervous. Temari is a relieved sort of happiness that hovers somewhere between pride and wonder, and she’s expanded mandatory family breakfasts to mandatory family dinners and is badgering their father to join.</p><p>“Why,” Kankuro had asked flatly, fingers tapping against the table. “He hates us. He kept trying to have Gaara assassinated. He’s a dick.”</p><p>“He’s family,” Gaara tried unsurely, and Kankuro rolled his eyes.</p><p>“Family can still be dicks.”</p><p>“He’s also the leader of the village,” Temari retorted. “Gaara and I have questions for him about mission distributions. There’s a five week waiting list on getting a formal meeting with him but everyone eats dinner.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, maybe they do, but not everyone has to eat it with a guy they hate. You two do your politics thing, I’m going to be in the workshop doing my puppet thing, it’ll be great.”</p><p>Kankuro won’t be budged. Gaara tried, but Temari told him to leave Kankuro to work things out for himself, and reluctantly, Gaara did. He also offered to kill the Kazekage for his brother, if Kankuro wanted, but all that got him was a considering hum from Kankuro and a strict instruction not to from Temari, neither of which solved the problem of Kankuro skipping mandatory family dinners.</p><p>But: “The laws make people be seen. That’s what they’re there for, to make sure the village pays attention to the people that need it, and to define who we are to the people outside.” At least, they do when they’re done right, and if they aren’t right yet then he and Temari will keep having dinner with their father until they are.</p><p>He gets no reply. He frowns, and tries again. “Mother. Mother, I found a way to exist.”</p><p><em>Congratulations,</em> Mother finally says. <em>I’m delighted for you.</em></p><p>They don’t sound delighted. They also don’t reply again for the rest of the night.</p><p> </p><p>A year passes. Gaara learns. Gaara grows. By the time he sees Sasuke again, he feels almost like a person. He knows who he is. He knows what he’ll do when presented with most things life offers him, and he knows how to approach things that are unfamiliar without needing someone to tell him how he should react. The concept of <em>Gaara, Temari and Kankuro’s brother, the Kazekage’s son</em> is one that’s defined as much by things he won’t do as by things he will, and even if there are people who shy away and still see the blood-hunger he was instead of the person he is, there are enough who don’t that it doesn’t matter.</p><p>Even if it’s enough, it’s a small number. He has become something of a hermit, a rumour even in his own village. He wanders the streets at night when his siblings are asleep and avoids the few people still awake who might notice him. During the day he takes missions or confines himself to the house - mandatory breakfast with Temari and Kankuro, mandatory dinner with Temari and either Kankuro or their father but never both at once. Temari’s started taking him with her to the council meetings she’s convinced Rasa to let them attend. She’s a chunin now - they all are - and can lead the missions they’re sent on, but when she can’t come Baki is often sent in her stead.</p><p>Gaara is aware that Baki was chosen as their sensei as much to keep him under control as anything else. Baki has stopped him killing his siblings several times in the past. He is also aware that Baki is more than willing to stop him again, should he need to, but the man is nothing if not fair. If Gaara does not attack, Baki will not defend.</p><p>Kankuro thinks it’s not enough. “Other people’s senseis aren’t strictly professional,” he explains, hunching protectively over the joints he’s reworking on his puppet. “Other people’s senseis actually care about them as people, not just because they’re the kazekage’s kids.”</p><p>“We aren’t other people,” Gaara says, and Kankuro snorts and changes the topic.</p><p>Not other people, but still, almost a person, and Gaara waits by the gates as Sasuke approaches with an excited anticipation to show her what he’s done.</p><p>"Get off the wall," she teases when she sees him. "You're welcoming a foreign diplomat. You'd think you'd act like it."</p><p>There are laws about foreign diplomats, and protocols - less binding than laws but still helpful for telling people what to do - but at his heart Gaara has always been willing to ignore instructions if they get in the way of something he wants. It’s easy to fall into a pattern, sticking close to her when neither of them are needed elsewhere, turning to her for simple decisions and small choices that don’t seem to make much difference to life but make both of them happy all the same.</p><p>“Lunch,” she says, sweeping into the room and collecting him with an imperious bounce to her step. “An inside place, the sun hates me. Do you realise how unfair it is that I’m finally somewhere warm and I can’t go out and enjoy it? There’s something wrong with the world. Do you have any money?”</p><p>He puts aside the latest reading he was doing for Temari, mentally marking his place. She’s with the Kazekage again, shadowing him in his office - it’s not official yet that she’s being taken off mission roster to focus on learning to be the next kage because they have too few fighters of her caliber to risk it, but she’s confided that she wants to do more for the village than just argue with their father over dinner.</p><p>“No,” he tells Sasuke. “People don’t like it when I go in their shops.”</p><p>“Well that’s stupid of them. They’re going to have to get used to it because I refuse to eat alone, and you never know with a takeaway if you’re going to have room for dessert.” She frowns, chewing her lip in thought, then spins on her heel and heads for the workshop downstairs. “Kankuro can pay,” she decides, and glances over her shoulder to check that Gaara’s following as she goes to let him know.</p><p>She does that a lot. Checking that Gaara’s there. Sometimes she comes to find him with excuses that are barely short of nonsensical, sometimes she comes to find him with no excuses at all. There’s a tenseness to the way she holds herself when she’s alone, or sometimes when she gets distracted and forgets that Gaara’s with her. He makes a noise, or shifts his weight enough that his clothes move in the breeze, and she goes still; then her eyes flick over to him and the tenseness drains out of her as she relaxes again. Sometimes Gaara says something. Often he doesn’t, and she leans back against him in companionable silence until her restlessness drags them both off somewhere else.</p><p>It’s different to how Temari touches him. That’s telegraphed. Deliberate. she does it often enough that it’s comfortable, but it’s never casual the way it is with Sasuke. Leaning against him, leaning against the mound he’s made of his sand to support them, leaning over his shoulder to see what he’s reading. Standing on her toes and holding her hand on the top of his head to prove that she can be as tall as him when she tries. Poking him in the arm until he makes a sand umbrella to stop her skin burning in the sun.</p><p>He’s never used his sand to protect someone like that before. Mother uses it to protect him, and accidentally to protect Sasuke that one time in the forest in Konoha, except that hadn’t worked and Sasuke had still got hurt. But giving her shade? Or something to stand on so she can reach the top shelf in the cupboard? These are new. So is the way she takes him out into the village in the day; he’s never done that before, and it’s a different experience to wandering through it at night. There are still people who recognise him and draw back with wary fear, but there are others who don’t. They glance up at him in curiosity, eyes lingering on his unusually red hair or the kanji carved into his forehead. Or over at Sasuke, the many layers of bright fabric she’s taken to wearing, the complete lack of respect she shows to Kankuro who most people still treat as the kazekage’s son.</p><p>Kankuro doesn’t say, but Gaara knows him well enough to see the way he holds himself stiffly when they do that. He doesn’t like being the Kazekage’s son. He likes Sasuke, more now that he’s got used to her and knows what to expect from her, and somehow lunch with Kankuro and Sasuke slots into the routine alongside mandatory family breakfast and dinner with Temari and their father. Kankuro is more relaxed when it’s just the three of them, and he argues with Sasuke over trivial things, and pulls <em>brother</em> like a trump card and expects Gaara to back him up. When Gaara can find a way to do so without going against Sasuke in the process, he does. It helps that she’s good at giving him a way out and that Kankuro never really presses Gaara to choose between them, but it also helps that, occasionally, Gaara has his own ideas that neither of them seem to have thought of yet. Like cold soba noodles. If Sasuke and Kankuro can agree on lunch, that’s fine, but if they can’t then Gaara directs them to cold soba noodles, and pretends not to hear when they blame each other for the monotony.</p><p>It takes them two weeks to start teaming up against him. Almost a month before they have it down to a seamless art. Cold soba noodles don’t vanish, because Gaara likes them, but the bickering about restaurant choices does, and even if Gaara never quite understands the arcane rules they decide on for which days they eat where, he’s satisfied with himself for the change.</p><p>The village, though. Some people who are afraid of him don’t stop being afraid of him. Some people who were afraid of him before allow themselves to be reassured by the way he hasn’t killed anyone recently; they treat him like Baki does, willing to give him a chance but prepared to retreat again if they need to. Others seem to take comfort from the fact that Sasuke is always with him, not because they think she could protect them, but because she’s jarringly out of place next to their image of him as a deranged and uncontrollable killer. Some seem to genuinely believe he’s changed, or have only heard stories of him before and decide that they must have been exaggerated or wrong.</p><p>It’s… Existing. It feels like existing. It’s still not the rush of satisfaction he used to get from crushing someone in his sand and using their blood as validation. There’s still a barrier between him and the rest of the world, his sand still dulling the sensations against his skin and his reputation still holding some people at a distance. But he’s defined who he is to himself, and he’s defined who he is to his family, and now he’s defining who he is to his village, and it’s <em>existing.</em></p><p>“Of course you exist,” Temari assures him when he tries to explain. “You’ve always existed, no one can take that away from you.” She’s earnest, but she doesn’t understand.</p><p>“<em>A</em> Gaara existed,” Kankuro says. “This one didn’t. This one’s, like, a toddler.”</p><p>“I’m fifteen,” Gaara corrects, frowning. He doesn’t think Kankuro understands either, but Kankuro is harder to interpret than Temari is.</p><p>“Yeah, I know, but you weren’t you before. You were muder-you.” Kankuro waves an airy hand, nose in a scroll and frowning at what looks like a diagram of a senbon launcher. “I like this version better.”</p><p>“You like me?” Gaara asks, sitting up straighter. “Do you love me yet?”</p><p>Kankuro looks up in alarm, jolting enough to spill coffee over his uneaten breakfast. “What conversation are we having?” he asks. “I wasn’t paying attention. I promised Sasuke I’d do something with roses, see you later, she gets cranky if she has to wait.”</p><p>“Don’t be an ass to your brother!” Temari calls after him as he downs his coffee and retreats, but Kankuro just mumbles something indistinguishable about not being and drops out the window instead of taking the stairs. “Ignore him,” she says, turning back to Gaara with a disgruntled frown that she smoothes out as soon as she notices it. “He does love you, he’s just too constipated to say.”</p><p>Gaara opens his mouth to say something about love and how it’s complicated, but he pauses. A hand lifts uncertainly to his chest.</p><p>“Do you love me?” he asks instead.</p><p>“Yes,” Temari answers decisively, and Gaara thinks he must’ve already known that. His heart-pain has been healing for a while now. It started when Sasuke first saw him back in Konoha, but he hadn’t been able to recognise it at the time, and it’s been so gradual that it’s only now he’s paying attention to it that he notices how much less it hurts than it did before.</p><p>“Oh,” he manages around a sudden feeling of lightness that’s nothing like the satisfaction he used to get from blood. He’s not sure what else he’s meant to say, but Temari smiles at him, so he thinks he did ok.</p><p><em>I hate her,</em> Mother says in the back of his head. He doesn’t let his reaction show and he doesn’t answer right away, but internally, he’s surprised. Mother hasn’t spoken to him for a while now.</p><p>“Who?” he asks, after, when breakfast’s done and he’s alone again where no one will be put off by him talking to someone who no one else can hear. “Temari?”</p><p><em>No,</em> they say, and retreat back to the seal without saying anything else.</p><p> </p><p>“Distracted,” Sasuke accuses later. Gaara shakes himself and tries harder to focus on her. She’s sprawled on the floor of the room she’s claimed as an office; Gaara is sat on the chair by her desk, and the figures for the latest report they’re meant to be compiling are strewn messily around her and tidily around him with liberal coloured markings to track the progress they’ve made.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says. “Temari told me she loved me at breakfast.”</p><p>“Oh,” Sasuke says, and blinks. “Understandable, carry on.” At Gaara’s confused look she shifts her weight, bringing her knees up to a more neatly contained sitting position. “The first time Sakura told me she loved me I had a panic attack about it,” she admits. “It’s a big thing for people to spring on you without warning.”</p><p>Ah. Sasuke and love, Gaara should have remembered. “It’s ok,” he promises her. “Temari’s family, she’s allowed.” He wonders if Temari would call Sasuke constipated as well, except that Temari has been in a permanent stage of ‘withholding judgement’ since Sasuke arrived in Suna. At least, she says she has been, but Gaara thinks that’s changed since Sasuke made the official switch from Konoha diplomat to Suna trade advisor, and the cautious interest Temari shows in Sasuke now is oddly familiar. It reminds him of the way Temari used to approach him before he settled more comfortably into being a brother who wouldn’t try to murder her again.</p><p>“No, I know,” Sasuke says. “And even if she wasn’t family she’d still be <em>allowed</em>, but that doesn’t make it not a big thing.” She chews on her lip in thought, then pushes her paperwork aside with a grandly sweeping gesture that sends a scroll to a rolling stop somewhere under the sofa. “We should spar,” she says.</p><p>Gaara looks at her. Then down at his own copy of the paperwork with it’s much neater series of checkmarks. “We should ensure the minimum age of employment is consistent across the civilian population,” he corrects. “We need it to estimate the number of workers available for your glass factories.” They also need it because at the moment it’s defined differently for each industry and differently again for children from different backgrounds or with differing levels of education. They overlap poorly and the inconsistencies leave gaps for people to fall through. These are the laws that need to be fixed if Suna is going to heal.</p><p>“We should,” Sasuke agrees easily, “but not if you’re distracted. They’ll still be there when we get back, and we’ll have clearer heads to do them better, it’ll be great.”</p><p>She stands, rocking on the balls of her feet in anticipation, and Gaara automatically stands too to follow her. “I’ve never sparred with anyone,” he says. “People don’t like my sand.”</p><p>“What, seriously? That’s pants. You still go on missions, how’re you meant to get better if no one bothers to train with you? Make Kankuro do it, he’s fun to spar with. Just promise not to break his puppet too much, he’s working on a new spine mechanism and it’s still in prototype stages at the moment. You know he made me spend four hours filing vertebrae yesterday? Four <em>hours.</em> I think <em>I’d</em> cry if you wrecked it and made me start again.”</p><p>“I promise not to break his puppet too much,” Gaara repeats dutifully, and resigns himself to asking Kankuro to spar. If the one with Sasuke goes well. He doesn’t think Kankuro will necessarily agree, but if it’s what Sasuke wants then he can at least try.</p><p> </p><p>The spar with Sasuke does not go well.</p><p><em>I <strong>despise</strong> her</em>, Mother snarls, roaring forward in a way they haven't done in over two years. Gaara grapples with them in his mind, fighting to keep the sand flowing in a smooth curve instead of compacting to the solid fist that Mother wants it to be. They’re in a training area outside the village, on one of the rocky plateaus that overlooks the desert. It’s not itself sandy but it’s covered with a thin layer that’s been blown over it, and the dunes are close enough to encroach on the edge; with this much sand, no water, and almost no cover to hide behind, the spar should have been easy to win in Gaara’s favour.</p><p>Sasuke’s tricky though. She’s fast - faster than Gaara can react to, even when she doesn’t disappear and reappear behind him without bothering to cross the distance in between. He has to start directing his sand to where he thinks she’s going to be rather than where she is, and the glowing blue bubble that ripples over her skin makes her slippery and difficult to catch. The shurikens she throws don’t fly straight, but the way she uses chakra to twist them through the air is familiar at least from Suna’s puppeteers, and Gaara’s automatic defence is able to block the ones he doesn’t dodge.</p><p>But that’s not the problem. He reached for her, and he only meant to use his sand to immobilise her, but Mother’s surge of hatred took him by surprise.</p><p><em>Kill her, crush her, I want her blood,</em> they spit. <em>Make her <strong>bleed</strong>.</em></p><p>“No,” Gaara says through gritted teeth; the sand shudders against his control and closes around what should’ve been Sasuke’s leg, except Sasuke flickered out in time. She lands too close to the sand, using it as a platform to run along and gain speed even as it flares up around her and tries to catch her.</p><p><em>Because she likes you? Because she makes you exist? You exist all the time now, you don’t need her. </em>Their voice turns softer, persuasive, or trying to be at least. It’s too ragged to really be effective, the words fracturing with a vicious madness that Gaara wishes he didn’t remember so well. <em>I do. I need her. I need her blood. She’ll validate our existence. Think of how it’ll feel when she realises who we are, I want to hold her life in my claws and <strong>end it.</strong></em></p><p>Gaara thinks of how it would feel, and his stomach revolts. He’s never been sick in his life - Mother makes sure of it - and he never underwent the training of how to vomit out something that’s poisoning you, but the concept of Sasuke being afraid of him, of her looking at him like everyone used to and only seeing the blight on Suna but never the boy he was underneath - his rejection is visceral enough to make bile rise in his throat. If Mother would let him throw up to get rid of it he would.</p><p>The sand writhes around him. More streams in from the desert, turning the rocky plateau into a soupy, deadly mess. Every surface Sasuke touches tries to kill her, and she’s throwing shuriken in the air to kawarimi with in an attempt to stay out of reach. When the sand rises up to follow her she lands on it, running along it then pushing off with her feet shining blue in the sun from her bubble. Her grin is wide and exhilarated, like it’s a game, like if the sand catches her Mother wouldn’t form a coffin around her and send jagged spikes to tear through her bubble and rip the life out of her chest.</p><p>She’s not afraid.</p><p>
  <em>She should be. She should be! I’ll make her be, I’ll make her see -</em>
</p><p>She trusts Gaara to keep her alive.</p><p>“Make someone else see,” he says, clenching his fists and dragging on the sand to pull it back. It’s harder than it should be, harder than it ever has been before, and the strain of it is unfamiliar and unwelcome. He ignores it, but something must show on his face, because Sasuke falters when she glances at him.</p><p>“Gaara?” she asks, dropping out of her quick-paced dodging and tilting her head in concern. “All good? Do you want to stop?”</p><p>“I -” Gaara starts, and Mother seizes his vocal chords. “<em>Want you to die,</em>” they finish for him, guttural and harsh. Sasuke takes an alarmed step back but her concern has cost her, and there’s sand around her knees. She switches, but it’s holding tightly enough that it goes with her, and when it crawls up to her waist the bubble is the only thing holding it back.</p><p>Gaara slashes his hand to the side to tear the sand off her. More replaces it, bulging and compressing it until it’s shaped almost like a malformed hand, dark stripes branching out over the back of it.</p><p>“Gaara,” Sasuke says again, more urgently this time, and Mother howls.</p><p><em>No,</em> they shriek, in Gaara’s head or out his mouth, he can’t tell. <em>No no no I’m not I’m more than that, it’s her fault, it’s her <strong>fault</strong> I want her blood -</em></p><p>Distantly, Gaara hears Sasuke swear, and sees her abandon her bubble in favour of fire. Distantly, because his ears are ringing; he isn’t familiar enough with pain to identify what’s shooting through his head but he’s brought both hands up to cradle his skull in an instinctive reaction to try and stop it. The sand defence skitters over his skin, the black patterns of Mother’s tanuki markings appearing and disappearing as they struggle to form around him.</p><p>“You’re hurting him,” Sasuke says, too fast and too loud, and there it is - that’s fear. Gaara can’t sense it, not like Mother can, but he can feel Mother’s manic glee and his own horror as he realises that Sasuke’s afraid and he’s the one that made it happen. “Shukaku, stop - <em>ow, fuck -</em> you’re hurting him, you’re <em>crushing</em> me, just - shit, wait -”</p><p>Impossibly, Mother stops. The glee is replaced by confusion, suspicion, anger - too many emotions for Gaara to sort through, and Mother’s never been this close to the surface before to broadcast them this loudly.</p><p>“<em>What did you call me,</em>” they ask, low and menacing, scraping Gaara’s throat raw as it hisses out.</p><p>“Shukaku,” Sasuke pants, then winces as the sand tightens convulsively around her. Her skin is red, blistering and cracking around her hands and mouth from her fire jutsu, and there’s swathes of crude glass mixed into the sand that’s disrupting Mother’s control. More sand is melting where it’s trying to creep up her chest, forming a semi-molten barrier wherever it touches her that’s the only thing keeping her still alive. It’s burning through her clothes and probably through her skin, and she’s holding herself rigidly tense from the pain. “Shukaku,” she says again, “Um, Ichibi, sorry - fuck, Gaara please -”</p><p>“<em>No,</em>” Mother snarls, an edge of their earlier madness creeping in. “<em>Not him. You’re talking to me. How did you know my name?</em>”</p><p>“Let me go,” Sasuke says instead of answering, and Mother rears up in denial.</p><p><em>Let her go,</em> Gaara repeats in his head, wrestling control back and trying to pry the sand away. <em>She can’t answer you if she’s dead.</em></p><p>They hiss, digging in and refusing to back down. <em>I don’t want answers, </em>they insist, though with less conviction than before. <em>I want blood.</em> Still, without their anger they can’t keep fighting him, and he slumps in relief as they - and the pain they were causing - subside. He flings a hand away from him, fingers spread open, and the sand around Sasuke disperses, leaving just the slowly cooling glass behind.</p><p>He wants to go to her, to see if she was as badly burnt by it as she seems. He’s not familiar with injuries. He doesn’t know how serious they are, but worse than his worry is the fact that he nearly killed her, and she probably doesn’t want him to approach.</p><p>“You can’t have hers,” he tells Mother instead, bringing himself slowly to his feet and watching in case he needs to give Sasuke more space.</p><p>
  <em>You don’t let me have anyone’s. You don’t let me exist. </em>
</p><p>He frowns, but he doesn’t have time to react to that because Sasuke’s pushed the glass off her and is coming towards him. He takes a step back, and she pauses.</p><p>“Gaara?” she asks hesitantly. “You ok?”</p><p>“You were afraid,” he says uncertainly. She doesn’t seem to be now. He feels twelve again, faced with someone who didn’t act like he expected and not sure what to do.</p><p>“Yes?” she answers. “A bijuu just tried to smoothie me. It was a very afraid-worthy experience.”</p><p>In his head, Mother seems mollified, almost pleased by the confirmation. They rally quickly once they notice it and their distrust returns with a wary growl.<em> Ask her how she knows my name.</em></p><p>“But you aren’t afraid now,” Gaara says, ignoring them until he understands. That could take a while - Sasuke is not good at straight answers. “Even though it could happen again. I don’t - why aren’t you ever scared of me?”</p><p>She blinks. One hand is pressed against the lower side of her chest, where the multiple layers of tops she wears have burnt through to reveal the skin beneath. It’s shiny and raw, and when she says, “Because you wouldn’t hurt me?” in a tone that’s as bewildered as Gaara feels, he stares at it pointedly and crosses his arms. “Because <em>you</em> wouldn’t hurt me,” Sasuke repeats, frowning. “You’re not your bijuu. Um, your mother. I trust you.”</p><p>Gaara doesn’t reply. <em>You weren’t you before,</em> he remembers Kankuro saying at breakfast.<em> You were muder-you. I like this version better.</em> Gaara’s always been himself, he thinks. People just weren’t able to see past Mother to find him, not until Sasuke did, and now no one can see past him to find Mother. Except that Sasuke can.</p><p>“They’re asking how you knew their name,” he says, not sure how to handle that. He thinks he might’ve broken the promise he made when he was seven and Mother first explained how you could be so alone you may as well not exist, and that’s an uncomfortable thing to realise about himself.</p><p>Sasuke relaxes at the change of topic, and takes the last couple of steps to reach Gaara then sink gratefully down to the ground. She tugs on his sleeve as she goes and he obediently sits down next to her, summoning a pile of sand in an automatic movement for them to lean back against.</p><p>“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess a story? Or a legend? The tailed beasts are pretty famous, and Shukaku’s hard to forget.”</p><p><em>I am,</em> Mother confirms. They sound cautiously pleased again. <em>Ask her what the legends say.</em></p><p>Sasuke raises an eyebrow when Gaara passes it on. “Well, they missed out the vanity,” she says dryly, and Mother bristles.</p><p><em>I could crush her,</em> they snarl. <em>I could summon the desert to eat her, I could rip her open and water the sand with her blood. What do the legends say?</em></p><p>“If you kill her,” Gaara reminds them, “She can’t tell you.”</p><p>“And if you keep threatening to kill her she’ll leave all the stories on cliffhangers and invent a thousand and one of them to keep you hooked,” Sasuke adds, then shakes her head. “No she won’t. She doesn’t have a thousand and one stories. Don’t do that.” It doesn’t make much sense, but Gaara’s used to that from Sasuke, and it’s almost amusing to watch someone else getting frustrated at her confusing replies. “I don’t remember them all,” she warns, moving back to Mother’s question. “It was a while ago, before my mum died. I think you were a desert guardian in them, though? There was something about a shrine and a monk. I know that you’re a tanuki dog and that you command sand, but that’s more from watching you and Gaara fight than from the legends.”</p><p><em>That’s me,</em> Mother says. <em>She’s talking about me. </em>They’re - excited? It’s hard to tell, but it feels almost like the rush of satisfaction from killing someone. <em>Tell her I’m a sandstorm. Tell her how strong I am, tell her I’m unstoppable. Tell her how they tried to trap me in a seal and I broke my way out and kept killing them because I can’t be shut away.</em></p><p>Gaara hesitates at that last one, but still repeats it, though he does add on the end, “We don’t kill people from the village any more. We stopped doing that.”</p><p>
  <em>You stopped doing that. I never agreed to it. </em>
</p><p>It’s a fair point. It’s also a difficult one to resolve, because it’s not one Gaara can compromise on, not without sacrificing too many other things he wants to keep. His siblings wouldn’t understand - Sasuke might, he still remembers that her instructions were not to kill people she liked rather than not to kill people at all as Temari demanded. At least, not to kill people unless specifically instructed otherwise, though Gaara is sent on far less violent missions than he potentially should be and he knows Temari demanded that as well, even if he wasn’t in the room with her and their father when she did it.</p><p>Sasuke’s become attached to Suna though. He’s not sure he could easily identify the people in it she does and doesn’t like.</p><p>He’s become attached as well, and thinking of that makes him think of the laws and the way he has to make sure they cover everyone and no one’s left out to be treated like they don’t exist.</p><p>He frowns.</p><p>“Why doesn’t Suna know the legends?” he asks. Neither Sasuke nor Mother have an immediate answer and he doesn’t wait for them to think of one. “You can exist without killing people. There have to be better ways to make them see.”</p><p><em>They see when they’re afraid,</em> Mother snaps back defensively. <em>If they’re not afraid then they haven’t seen.</em></p><p>“Sasuke’s not afraid.”</p><p>“Of Shukaku?” Sasuke cuts in. “Yes she is.” Gaara turns to stare at her, and the way she’s resting comfortably back against the sand with her shoulder brushing against his, and the complete lack of anything resembling fear in her posture. The hand over her side is now glowing blue from the bubble - it’s not healing anything, and she keeps cancelling the chakra and restarting it, so he assumes it’s there to help with the pain. He’s still not familiar enough with injuries to recognise how serious it is, but he trusts Sasuke as much as she trusts him. If she’s not worried about it then he’s not going to press her. “Ok, fine,” Sasuke allows, “I’m not afraid of Shukaku right this second because Shukaku’s not actively attacking right this second. I’m more… appreciative in general that they’re a lot stronger than me and that I’m hopelessly outmatched and wouldn’t survive again?”</p><p>Gaara scowls. “Mother’s not going to kill you,” he tells her - and Mother - flatly.</p><p><em>I could though,</em> Mother says. Gaara scowls harder, and feels their amusement rolling back in response. <em>I might not. But I could, and she knows I could. I broke her bubble, her fire wasn’t going to stop me. She knew that too.</em> Then, abruptly, <em>I want a garden.</em></p><p>Gaara’s scowl falters.</p><p>
  <em>Tell her. But don’t let her put a mountain in it, make her put a statue of me in it so people know it’s mine. And tell her that obviously flowers die, if they didn’t die they couldn’t come back when it rained. That’s how it works.</em>
</p><p>It makes very little sense to Gaara, but he tells her. From Sasuke’s expression, it makes very little sense to her either.</p><p>“Wait,” she says, frowning. “They want a shrine garden? Like the one at home?”</p><p>“I’ve never been to your shrine garden,” Gaara says, and Mother shushes him impatiently.</p><p>
  <em>Of course you haven’t, this is an us thing. I can have things you don’t know about. Make her show me the plans before she builds it, I want to make sure she does it right.</em>
</p><p>“A garden,” Sasuke repeats, sounding vaguely bewildered but willing to oblige. “Well, ok. Did you have a landscape in mind for me to copy? I’m pants at bonsai so I don’t know how many trees I can include, but if Gaara helps then the sand rivers should be easy at least. Though we’ll need to find somewhere sheltered for it, it won’t work if everything keeps blowing away.”</p><p>Gaara settles back, happy to let Mother and Sasuke plan the details. He doesn’t know if the garden will be enough to make sure the village remembers Mother and sees her to prove she exists, but it’s a start. It’s also infinitely better than the alternative, and he subtly checks on Sasuke again, reassuring himself that the burns are the only way she’s hurt.</p><p>She rolls her eyes when she catches him, and angles herself to rest more heavily against his side. She’s still running hot from the fire jutsu she used earlier. He can feel it, even through the sand armour, a line of warmth where she’s pressed against him. It’s comforting.</p><p>He focuses on it until the heat fades, and though he can still see how close she’s sitting she feels so much further away with the loss.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Kankuro: You <i>asked</i> the mad bijuu to stop killing you<br/>Sasuke: Look, I was stressed.<br/>Kankuro: Just. Asked it.<br/>Sasuke: And now I'm gardening for them, keep up.<br/>Kankuro: But<br/>Kankuro: You <i>asked</i> it?<br/>Sasuke: Were you expecting me not to?<br/>Kankuro: I mean, not exactly, but -<br/>Sasuke: Well there you go.<br/>Kankuro:<br/>Kankuro: You <i>asked</i> --</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Sasuke and Shikamaru: Coffee</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>At the start of the war with Sound, Sasuke asked Shikamaru if he knew where Kakashi was. He did not. Shortly before that conversation, Sasuke discovered that coffee was an actual thing in Konoha, just not one she'd ever found before.</p><p>These things are not related.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The responses to the last chapter were: WAR, coffee???, and 'ah yes, long pork'. The first is being dealt with in the fic, my fingers are in my ears and i refuse to acknowledge the third (she doesn't like the pork because she's <i>pescatarian</i> not because it's <i>people</i>), and that leaves the coffee question so voila. A ficlet.</p><p>Takes place during and shortly after chapter 34 (most recent chapter as of posting), and this one is technically canon. It's posted here because the pacing and style wouldn't work as an interlude, and this also means that you don't have to read this to understand anything that happens in the main fic.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Sasuke was seven years old and making her first trips to the shops to feed herself, she looked for coffee. It wasn’t the only thing she looked for - of her two sets of memories only one had any experience of running a house, however haphazardly, and she looked for a lot of things in those early months that she later accepted she couldn’t have. Coffee was just one of them. Given her age and her previous habit of using it as a meal replacement, it wasn’t even a bad one to lose.</p><p>Even if it would have been nice to have.</p><p>Don’t get her wrong, tea’s great, it’s just. Tea. You know?</p><p>When she’s twelve, just, so close to being thirteen that her birthday is single-digit number of days away, she sits cross-legged on the grass of the training ground and listens to Lee denouncing the Sound nin as unyouthful for daring to run away. She wrinkles her nose and says, “You are aware that we’re ninja and we stab people in the back when they’re asleep?”</p><p>It’s not loud enough for him to hear. It’s not meant to be, but Shikamaru is sat next to her.</p><p>“Who put salt in your coffee?” he asks. “I swear you didn’t used to be this sarcastic.”</p><p>“I’m not sarcastic. I’m right. Also, hold up. <em>Coffee</em>?”</p><p>The conversation moves on before he can answer or she can press him for more. She puts it out of her mind, but Shikamaru is more careful with the things he learns than she is. At the end of the training session she tugs on his sleeve to make him hang back and asks him a question he doesn’t know the answer to - doesn’t know that he could answer for her even if he did. She drops it, turning away from him with a brief flash of bitter helplessness that is aimed as much at her absent teacher as at him, and though she doesn’t bring it up again it’s not something he finds so easy to forget.</p><p>
  <em>Is Kakashi there?</em>
</p><p>Asuma dropped in on them when he could. If he was called away, he made it clear that he was still their teacher even if the village commanded his time, and he told them what he was allowed about where he was going or when he was hoping to be back. The war was important, yes, but so were his students, and it wasn't something he wanted them to forget.</p><p>“The village is its people,” he says one time. “Being a ninja means taking responsibility for them. Getting too caught up in what needs doing and forgetting the reasons behind it…” he pulls a face, fingers reaching instinctively for a cigarette the way they do when he’s trying not to reach for his guardian sash instead. “There’s no future in that.”</p><p>“But sometimes you need to consider the village as a whole rather than the individuals in it,” Shikamaru counters. “Someone who only moves to protect their pieces will never have the strategy to win the game.”</p><p>“Oh, is that why you always beat me at Go?” He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and holds it unlit between his teeth. “War isn’t a game, Shikamaru. It doesn’t end when you take the last piece.” The words are serious, but his tone is light and his expression is open. He angles his shoulders towards Shikamaru leadingly and Shikamaru rolls his eyes and gives the logical answer to the unasked question.</p><p>“If the village is the people, then putting the village first is a contradiction,” he says. “By definition you can’t put something ahead of itself, so you’re actually putting both village and people second to something else.” Asuma smiles, but Shikamaru just shakes his head. “It doesn’t work. The village isn’t just one person, it’s everyone. Prioritising a large group ahead of an individual isn’t a contradiction, it’s a necessity.”</p><p>Even if the individuals are your team, he thinks but doesn’t add. His gaze flicks down to the symbol of the guardians Asuma wears on his sash, and his thoughts continue: even if they’re your son. Asuma’s history with his father isn’t public knowledge, but Shikamaru knows it all the same.</p><p>Asuma hums. “Sometimes,” he allows. “Though I find that someone who struggles to value the individuals can rarely be trusted with the group.”</p><p>It’s not a reprimand. Or if it is, it’s a mild one; most of Asuma’s lessons are. It doesn’t make them any less important, and for all its simplicity this one annoys Shikamaru, lodging in his mind and refusing to let him put it aside.</p><p>
  <em>I honestly don’t care if it’s classified. Did they send Kakashi to Sound?</em>
</p><p>“Ino,” he finds himself saying, long enough later that he’s tired of the same arguments circling each other in his head. “Have you heard anything on Hatake?”</p><p>“Sakura’s sensei?” She frowns in thought, but they both know that she’d be able to answer straight away if she knew. “He's usually late and mopes a lot. I think he used to be ANBU. Why?”</p><p>“No reason.”</p><p>That gets him a frustrated huff. “That’s the worst answer. This is <em>exactly</em> why Naras aren’t allowed in T&amp;I, you’re all too lazy to lie properly. Try again.”</p><p>He levels her with a deadpan expression and repeats, “No reason.”</p><p>“<em>Shikamaru.</em>”</p><p>Still; Ino’s given him enough. Wherever Kakashi’s been posted, it’s not somewhere either of their dads are letting slip, and Shikamaru should be content to leave it at that. Like he said to Sasuke - if they hadn’t been told, there was a reason for it. Kakashi’s team is not more important than Kakashi’s village, and whatever strategy you use to win, it makes no sense to put the individual ahead of the group.</p><p>He <em>should</em> be content to leave it.</p><p>He buys the coffee on a whim. Cold; there’s no point buying hot if it isn’t going to stay hot, and fire jutsu aren’t exactly a Nara speciality. Besides, he prefers it cold. Why wouldn’t he buy cold coffee. It’s not like he’s buying it for someone else, and if he doesn’t drink it straight away, that’s only because he likes having it on hand so he doesn’t have to make a trip for it later on.</p><p>He finds her in the river, mud up to her knees and face crumpled in disgust.</p><p>“The fact that chakra can’t reach through water is bullshit,” Sasuke tells him in greeting. “So is the fact that anyone could be <em>this bad</em> at aiming. It’s a damn kunai, how hard is it to throw it somewhere dry. How hard is it to retrieve it <em>yourself</em>, inconsiderate pricks.”</p><p>“They’re academy students,” Shikamaru points out, amused. She shoots him a filthy glare (in both senses of the words) and adds another blunted weapon to the recovered pile.</p><p>“They’re still inconsiderate. I didn’t leave crap in the river for other people to clear up when I was an academy student. Urushi - <em>no.</em> Wet dog stinks, get out.”</p><p>The grey dog takes his paw back, tucking it neatly under his tail as though he’d never dreamed of putting it anywhere else. Shikamaru eyes him curiously; Sakura can claim the dogs are hers all she likes, but it’s fairly obvious that they aren’t. Or that not all of them are, at least, and this one in particular stays close enough to Sasuke that it’s fifty fifty whether she’s a summoner herself and keeping quiet about it.</p><p>Shikamaru doesn’t think so. Sasuke is Uchiha, and more attached to the remnants of her clan than most; he can’t see her signing someone else’s contract lightly. The dog is Kakashi’s, and the fact that he’s here - has been there every time Shikamaru’s seen Sasuke since the exam - is almost enough for Shikamaru to comment.</p><p>“Where’s your team?” he says instead, hands dropping to his pockets.</p><p>“Upstream.” Sasuke gestures over her shoulder; when Shikamaru looks, he can see the orange of Naruto’s jumpsuit, just on the edge of the trees. “We’re almost done. Did you come to gloat, or…?”</p><p>
  <em>I honestly don’t care if it’s classified. Did they send Kakashi to Sound?</em>
</p><p>“Here,” he says, withdrawing his hand from his pocket and throwing her the coffee in an easy underarm arc. She blinks at it when she catches it, reading the label in confusion.</p><p>“Why is it in a can?”</p><p>“Because that’s how it comes?” he answers, confused in turn. “How else would you buy it?”</p><p>She opens her mouth, thinks better of it, and switches to curling her hand round the can like she thinks he’ll take it away. He rolls his eyes at her and settles himself on the bank, leaning back against one of the trees the academy students should have been hitting with their kunai. It’s late afternoon, and he finished his own d-ranks not long before. Ino’s gone to find Tenten - again, she’s nothing if not determined when she sets her mind to something - and if Shikamaru goes home his mother will have some other chore for him to do. Sasuke-watching seems as good as any other way to pass the time.</p><p>She aims one of the muddy kunai at him, still dripping from the river. He catches it in his shadow and shoots her a petulant frown.</p><p>“You didn’t come just to give me coffee,” she says.</p><p>“If you say so,” he agrees, deliberately amiable in a way he knows will annoy her. So much of the world seems confusing and unknowable, sometimes it’s nice to retreat back to a certainty, and the way Sasuke sticks her tongue out at him and turns back to her mission is comforting in its predictability.</p><p>Maybe that’s why he came. The world is confusing and unknowable. Ino disagrees, and Lee’s enthusiasm is exhausting; Chouji is determined that whatever happens he will do his best to make something good of it in the end. It means he’s less taken in than Ino by the blind faith that Konoha will win, but that he’s less concerned than Shikamaru by the possibility that they won’t. Sakura leaves the village to the village and cares about her team with a hard-edged absolutism that feels narrow minded and dangerous to Shikamaru’s way of thinking, Tenten is too polite and too newly-introduced for him to categorise her either way. Naruto is quiet. If he had to guess, Shikamaru would guess that Naruto’s ideals give him faith in the village but that he tempers it with an understanding of what the win could cost, but he doesn’t know where Naruto would get that understanding <em>from.</em> Even Shikamaru struggles with the concept of sacrifice. Losing a piece in a game is not the same as losing a person in real life, however necessary a strategy it is.</p><p>“I despise wet,” Sasuke announces, dumping the last handful of kunai - and, it appears, a bent metal pipe that looks like it was part of a bo staff once - on the pile. She shakes her legs free of as much river as she can and pulls a face at the mud that sticks to her bare feet. “<em>Despise.</em>”</p><p>“I thought you were a water-type.”</p><p>“So? I’m good at stabbing people but I don’t like getting stabbed.” She collapses in an untidy sprawl next to him on the grass, shifting over for Urushi when he comes to join them. “Also, no I’m not. I’m fire. Everyone knows that.”</p><p>“If you say so,” he agrees again, just to make her scowl.</p><p>Sasuke is neither polite nor quiet. Like Sakura, she chooses her team over her village; unlike Sakura, she can’t focus her attention and ignore the things the village does. Like Naruto, she understands that victory is hard won and bloody; unlike Naruto, she doesn’t accept that it’s a price she has to pay. Sometimes Shikamaru looks at her and sees his own bitterness at the stupidity of the world reflected back at him, but where he swallows it because whether you like the world or not you have to play by its rules to live in it, she - doesn’t.</p><p>Maybe she can’t. He isn’t sure which, or what difference it would make.</p><p>“You would be terrible at Go,” he decides, and doesn’t realise he’s said it outloud until she raises an eyebrow at him.</p><p>“Yes?” she asks, like it’s obvious. “I’ve literally never played. I don’t know what the rules are.”</p><p>She has the can of coffee held between her knees. Opening it is not going well; without a second hand to brace it against it keeps slipping when she pulls the tab.</p><p>“You take turns placing pieces to win territory.” It’s an almost insultingly basic explanation, but sometimes the most complex things are hidden in the simplest disguises. “You’re meant to consider the whole board, but you’d pick an area you liked and refuse to let go of it, even if it cost you the game.”</p><p>“Not if my goal was to just keep that area,” she says, dismissing him in favour of bringing an arm of chakra-infused water out to hold the can in place. It’s an impressive abuse of what has to be a high-ranked elemental manipulation jutsu, but none of Team Seven seem to care about minor details like that.</p><p>Oh, and it’s no reason at all for Shikamaru to doubt her claim of being a fire user, of course.</p><p>“Coffee,” she finally declares as she gets it open. Then, a second later when she’s had a drink: “<em>Nyeck.</em> Oh god, it’s disgusting. Why is it disgusting. Does it already have milk in it? It’s <em>yuck</em>.”</p><p>He can’t help but snort at the sheer offence on her face. “It’s coffee. Have you never had it before?”</p><p>“I could have. I could have basically lived on coffee for most of my life, you don’t know that.”</p><p>“I’ll take it back if you don’t want it.”</p><p>“No. It’s an acquired taste and I’m going to acquire it.”</p><p>Shikamaru doesn’t know, really, why he sought Sasuke out, or why he felt the need to bring her coffee as an apology for not knowing where her sensei was. Asuma’s lesson is still confusing, things he’s been taught make good strategies still seem to contradict with things he feels are <em>right</em>, there’s still a war and he doesn’t know what will happen in it.</p><p>But, at the same time, Sasuke’s face as she takes another mouthful of coffee and forces herself to swallow it is hilarious.</p><p>“I was going to visit Chouji later,” he says, lying back and idly tracing shapes in the clouds. “They might let me take him out in a wheelchair like Kiba has.”</p><p>“We could run away with him and never bring him back,” she suggests brightly. “Naruto won’t mind if he stays with us. It’ll be great.”</p><p>“Don’t drag Chouji into your stupidity, jeez.”</p><p>“Don’t be such a downer all the time, <em>jeez.</em>”</p><p>“Troublesome,” he mutters, and closes his eyes for a nap. Sasuke has to deliver her completed mission anyway, he’s not going to Chouji straight away.</p><p>Sasuke also scoops up a chakra-assisted handful of water and dumps it on him, so there’s a change of plans and Shikamaru might not be visiting Chouji today at all. It’s for a good cause. Chouji will understand. Even <em>Asuma</em> wouldn’t begrudge him, not when Sasuke follows up the river water with a generous amount of river mud and Shikamaru resorts to shadow walking both of them into the deep part in revenge.</p><p>(He lifts his hand up so she mimics it and her coffee doesn’t spill because he can’t be asked to get her another one, but he also does nothing to stop Urushi diving in after them and relishes the way Sasuke complains about the mess. It might be petty to inflict a wet dog on her when he knows how obsessive she is about keeping clean, but even the greatest strategies are built on minor victories and it would be foolish of him not to take advantage where he can.)</p><p>(Also, he’s a Nara. In what universe would <em>petty</em> ever be a reason not to do something. Only an idiot would limit their options with arbitrary restrictions like that.)</p><p>(Plus, she started it.)</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Sasuke in Sound pt.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In Min's ideal scenario, Sasuke hightails to Sound and burns the Uchiha district to the ground as she goes. Given that this would leave the fish to suffocate and die in their pond, I made some minor adjustments but the bones remain: Orochimaru makes Sasuke an offer that, in this universe, she can't refuse.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was meant to be all one chapter, then I hit 8k words and hadn't yet finished and I thought I should probably split it. So. More to come, I promise.</p>
<p>Canon note: I've moved Suigetsu's timeline up a bit; in this he's already done his time as a labrat and is now a Sound nin working for Orochimaru. I have no excuse other than that I wanted him, and didn't want to wait the couple of years for Sasuke to meet him.</p>
<p>ALoW canon note: Takes place after Chapter 35 (most recent chapter as of posting).</p>
<p>As well as Min's ideal scenario (actually a ficlet which I've copied into the end notes so you can read the original) this includes WorldDomain's headcanon that Suigetsu would get attached to the fish, ReiLossefalme and Baby pop's musings on snake summons as secret hair jewellery, and at least two other ideas from the discord that you won't get to see until part two. Enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The plan was always to leave. That’s what Sasuke holds onto, what she reminds herself of as she lies through her teeth and waves Sakura an absent-minded goodbye as though they’ll see each other again in the morning. The plan was always to leave, and whether it’s with Itachi or not, it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe it will be with Itachi in the future, maybe it won’t; either way she’ll be out of Konoha and that’s the only part she really cares about.</p>
<p>“Do you mind if we go via home?” she asks Naruto. “I need to feed the fish.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t mind. While she’s there, she runs through the usual checklist; opening windows so Naruto can blow through a mild wind jutsu to air the rooms out, turning on the taps to make sure the water’s still running smooth, checking over the plants for any weeds or dead flowers that need cutting back. There might not be much point to it, but it’s quiet, and the deception is a necessary part of her escape.</p>
<p>When they go, she glances back over her shoulder and fixes a thread of chakra on a pebble by the door. She loses sight of it when they turn the corner. She doesn’t let the chakra slip. Not for the journey home, not for the evening where she navigates Naruto’s kitchenette as familiarly as she’d move round her own, not after when they’re curled on the sofa with Guruko a warm weight on her feet and Naruto asking, for the third time, if this means she’s decided she likes cup ramen and they get to have it more often.</p>
<p>“Don’t read too much into it,” she grumbles. “Maybe I just fancied something easy, did you ever think of that?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but you never have home ramen. You have eggs for easy food, home ramen means… <em>something.</em>”</p>
<p>She rolls her eyes. “It means I’m sick of crabsticks and the fishmonger’s still selling pork,” she says. It might even be true; there’s no other reason for her last meal with Naruto to be the food he particularly likes, and she shakes her head to change the topic. “I’m showering, shout if you need the bathroom first.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t. She goes in clothed, and takes her towel and pyjamas with her. There’s nothing strange about it; she always gets changed in the bathroom, and the way the clothes are folded her weapon pouch is hidden from view. She turns the shower on, throws the towel under the spray so it sounds like it’s hitting a body, and tugs on the thread of kawarimi. The pebble she switches with won’t make a sound as it tumbles onto the bathmat, and even if one of the dogs tries to check on her the combination of her pyjamas and her shampoo still being there should be enough to throw them off the scent. Even so, she doesn’t have long, and she moves through her house with silent efficiency as she collects the things she set aside earlier.</p>
<p>Suigetsu is waiting for her by the pond.</p>
<p>“You actually came?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her. “Wow, ok. I guess power-hungry comes in all sizes.”</p>
<p>“I’m not <em>power-hungry</em>,” she says. “And even if I was, it’s none of your business.”</p>
<p>“Not power-hungry, sure. That’s why you’re betraying your village in the middle of the night and running off to someone who promised to make you stronger, that makes perfect sense.”</p>
<p>She gives him a pinched look. She’s not in the mood to defend her choices, and her attention is split between the conversation and the heat-resistant gel she’s working over her fingers. “You have to be loyal to something before you can betray it. Can we go now, or did you have any other inane statements to make?”</p>
<p>“Touchy. Just waiting on you, the escape route’s all clear.”</p>
<p>She takes a breath. Orochimaru promised the escape route; she promised the distraction, and she cycles her chakra to fire in preparation. It’s late enough that there’s no trace of the sun left and the patchy clouds are doing a good job of obscuring the moon. The light from the Uchiha district burning to the ground will be easily visible; they won’t have long to get out once it catches. If she’s lucky, nothing will survive.</p>
<p>One of the fish mouths hopefully at the surface for pellets, and she hesitates. Suigetsu follows her gaze impatiently. When he sees the problem he rolls his eyes and scoops a hand through the pond, collecting the fish as he goes.</p>
<p>“Happy, princess?” he drawls, holding the water out to her in a beach-ball sized chakra sphere. It looks almost like it's floating, but it's not, and the join where his palms turn from flesh to water seems to shimmer from the ripples.</p>
<p>“No,” Sasuke says. “Nothing about this situation is <em>happy</em>.” Then, shaking her head and reminding herself that time isn't exactly on their side: “You can’t keep them in that little water, they'll get sick.”</p>
<p>Suigetsu scoffs. “Do I look like an amateur? They’ll be fine. Why do you care so much anyway? They're just fish.”</p>
<p>She could explain. She could also say “Fuck you,” and scowl, and that’s by far the better option.</p>
<p>“Fuck you back,” Suigetsu answers with too many teeth in his grin. There’s an odd sucking sound, then the water-sphere - fish and all - sinks into his chest. The dark shadows of the koi are just visible where his torso should be, and Sasuke tries very hard not to stare.</p>
<p>The garden is a good distraction. She doesn't let herself think about what she's doing or she’s not sure she’ll be able to continue, and she focusses instead on the splintering hatred, the cold despair of never being enough and never being safe, the fucking <em>unfairness</em> of everything Konoha represents - she flashes her eyes red to capture her flowers, and sets both them and the house on fire.</p>
<p>The honeysuckle takes a while to burn.</p>
<p>“You should probably knock me out for the next part,” she says, still staring numbly at the flames. Suigetsu rolls his head on his shoulders, cricking his neck obscenely loud.</p>
<p>“I live to serve,” he tells her, the mocking clear in his voice. “Hate to keep a lady waiting.”</p>
<p>Sasuke shoots him a peeved glare, but she's unconscious before it connects.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Purple, she decides, is a shit colour. If it was a stronger purple, maybe, but the greyish-pastel makes her look washed out and half-dead. It highlights the dark under her eyes, picks out even the faintest of bruises, and clashes with the red-gold pins she refused to leave behind. The less said about the stupid rope belt the better.</p>
<p>“I’m Uchiha,” she says, wrinkling her nose at the loose off-white top that pairs with the purple... open skirt thing. “We’re red, not purple. It’s our thing.”</p>
<p>“Bullshit,” Suigetsu accuses, and throws her a pair of leggings. “I was snooping for an hour before you turned up, there wasn’t a single red thing in any of your wardrobes.”</p>
<p>“What the fuck, don’t snoop through other people’s stuff.”</p>
<p>“Don’t lie to my face about colours, then. Are you done? Can we shift?”</p>
<p>She glares at him, making no move to change into the new clothes while he’s in the room. “Can I trade you in for a different model? I came willingly, I don’t need a guard all the time.”</p>
<p>He shrugs at that, and obligingly turns around and holds his hands over his eyes. He doesn’t look like he’s peeking. Sasuke activates a genjutsu around herself all the same. “Boss’ orders,” he says. “Apparently you’re too valuable to lose. Wouldn’t want you getting prissy about the uniform and running back to Konoha, would we.”</p>
<p>She pulls a face at his turned back. If she <em>were</em> going to change her mind and run it wouldn’t be back to Konoha, and as much as Suigetsu is a poor matchup for her on paper, she doesn’t think he’d be able to stop her. With his water he neatly covers her fire and taijutsu skills but she’s not stupid enough to waste time <em>attacking</em> if she needs to escape. Suigetsu’s direct, and better suited to head-on sword fights than subterfuge or illusions - he’d be annoyingly persistent, but like she said. Not enough to stop her.</p>
<p>Which is a moot point because she’s not going to change her mind. She pulls on the clothes, frowns in disgust at the baggy sleeves and decides to cut them off as soon as possible, and leaves the rope belt in a pile on the floor.</p>
<p>“Ready,” she says. Suigetsu snores at her, his posture slumped exaggeratedly over as though it’d been so long he’d gone to sleep. Given that Sasuke took approximately forty three seconds, she takes exception to this, and adjusts her genjutsu to make the earth suddenly vanish beneath him. Combined with the way she sweeps his legs out and dumps him on the floor - that he now can’t see - it makes for a startling wake up call, and she smirks in satisfaction as he flails.</p>
<p>“Are you done?” she drawls, tucking away the knowledge that he hadn’t even tried a <em>kai</em>. “Can we shift?”</p>
<p>“Anyone ever tell you you were a dick? Because by princess standards, you’re a dick.”</p>
<p>“I’m a dick by anyone’s standards,” she corrects, and sweeps past him out the room.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Filters are hard to come by in Sound. So are ponds, but that one at least Sasuke can improvise on, and fish pellets, which are simple enough to mimic but time consuming to make. But filters - no. She can stuff buckets with porous stones and sponges, she can rig pipes to connect them to the square-sided room-pool she’s keeping the koi in, but short of manually moving the water through the damn contraption herself, she can’t make her homebrew filter <em>work.</em></p>
<p>Also sunlight. The Eastern Hideout is a lovely base, top marks for snake-like aesthetics and oppressive atmospheres, excellent details with the vents in the wall that clang ominously at random intervals and are just too small to crawl through - <em>pants</em> for vitamin D. Sasuke’s suffering. The assorted duckweed and hornwort she’s attempting to coax into life in her pond is suffering. The dang fish are suffering. It’s all pants.</p>
<p>“Hey, what happened to their colour?” Suigetsu asks, leaning over the edge. Rather than hollow out a space for them to live in Sasuke went the opposite way and lifted up the doorway of an unused side room near her quarters. The whole room is now flooded, with just enough boulders and stepping stones to get around, and the spot in the far corner is exactly right for her to tuck herself into and be ignored.</p>
<p>It’s also exactly right for Suigetsu to sprawl back over, heels drumming against the surface of the water and head tilted to frown at the fish.</p>
<p>“It’s been two months,” Sasuke says, not looking up from her scroll. “If I was going to run, I would’ve run. Why are you still here.”</p>
<p>“I can’t check up on you? They’re all… washy. Why are they all washy?”</p>
<p>She frowns, cutting a glance down to the pond. The fish are as healthy as she can keep them, but their bright patches have faded, and their movements are listless and lethargic.</p>
<p>“They don’t like the pond,” she admits, frustrated. “It’s not outside and it’s not good enough.”</p>
<p>Suigetsu sits up in alarm. “They’re dying?”</p>
<p>“No. They’re just not happy.”</p>
<p>He squints at her, still drumming his heels. She ignores both him and the splashes he makes. “Outside,” he finally says. “Well, ok then. Come to papa, fishlingtons.”</p>
<p>“<em>Fishlingtons?</em> What are you - hey, wait -”</p>
<p>Suigetsu doesn’t wait. He wades into the pond, his lower half spiraling out into water as he goes, and when he steps out the other side and reforms he has all the koi once again in his body.</p>
<p>“Give them back,” Sasuke snaps, abandoning her reading to follow him. He cocks his head at her over his shoulder and whistles cheerily.</p>
<p>“Nope. We’re going on a field trip. You can come too if you like, but I’m not going to carry you.”</p>
<p>“Suigetsu, don’t steal my damn - Suigetsu!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As many times as she goes to it, Sasuke won’t get used to Kabuto’s laboratory. It’s better than the one he has at the Island Hideout - that’s just <em>creepy</em> - but the assorted giant test-tubes and surgical machines at the Eastern Hideout are nothing to sneer at.</p>
<p>“Your sharingan is stubborn,” he says, smiling at her in a way that makes no attempt to reach his eyes. It’s his professionalism, she thinks, that she hates most of all. At least with Orochimaru she <em>knows</em> which parts of her he’s fascinated by and what she can keep for herself, but Kabuto’s impossible to read. He could be delighted by the challenge, he could be bored or frustrated, he could at any point decide to snap and carve her open while he has her, there’s no clue either way and she doesn’t <em>know</em>.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help that Suigetsu avoids the lab. As annoying as he is, she’s got used to his constant presence. It’s unsettling when he isn’t there.</p>
<p>“No luck with the bone marrow,” Kabuto continues. “There’s still no reason to suggest that blood <em>isn’t</em> the key to recreating it, but the correct source material may be more localised in your body than we first thought.” He blinks at her, a contrived expression that does very little to humanise the considering eyes behind his glasses. “Of course, if you’d consent to replicating your DNA the more traditional way…”</p>
<p>“No,” Sasuke says flatly. “You’re cloning a sharingan, not an Uchiha. I’m not cut out for parenthood.”</p>
<p>“You’d hardly be involved,” he says mildly, but abandons the topic all the same. Sasuke isn’t sure how far Orochimaru’s indulgence of her will stretch, but so far she’s managing to stay enough on his good side that he allows her her limits. For now. The longer it takes Kabuto to successfully produce a sharingan, the higher the risk that will change, but at the moment the rules are clear: Kabuto can take whatever genetic data from her he likes and do with it as he will, but if he creates a living human being then Sasuke’s claiming them as family and Kabuto doesn’t get a say.</p>
<p>She doesn’t care how much easier it would make her life to let Orochimaru have his clones. Family doesn’t work like that, and she might have betrayed Konoha, but she never betrayed the clan.</p>
<p>“Very well then,” Kabuto says, reaching for a needle. “The next thing to try is a sample from your optic nerve. Keep still please; I’d rather not leave you blind.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Rough session?” Suigetsu asks, peeling himself off the wall as she approaches. She looks at him, briefly, then away, trusting her expression to say enough.</p>
<p>“Here,” he says, and dumps a sphere of water in her arms. “Have a fish.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The first snake Sasuke summons is a tantilla. He’s tiny, the full length of him barely more than a handspan; he has no venom, no chakra skills to speak of, and he’s too small to pose a threat to Sasuke’s <em>finger</em> let alone to her enemies.</p>
<p>He threads himself through the strands of her hair and curls his tail possessively round her ear. The black scales are all but invisible from a distance; when Sasuke takes the front section of her hair and loops it back in a braid, the snake is perfectly camouflaged against it.</p>
<p><em>You’re warm,</em> he hisses, too quiet for anyone else to hear.</p>
<p>“I’m fire,” Sasuke explains, and lifts a palm-full of dancing flames to demonstrate. It comes easier now than it did before, and even if she doesn’t fully believe Orochimaru when he digresses into souls and how loosely hers is attached, she can’t deny that she likes the results of his training. The snake flicks his tongue out, swaying as he follows the light, then buries his head in her braid.</p>
<p><em>You can stay,</em> he decides. <em>I’ll tell you who to call next.</em></p>
<p>The second snake Sasuke summons is a spitting cobra. It too is black, though several feet long this time and as thick around as Sasuke’s arm is. As a cobra it has a flared hood of scales behind its head; as a spitter, it has a habit of firing its venom directly into its enemies eyes and blinding them before it attacks.</p>
<p>“How fitting,” Orochimaru says, looking between them with an expression of calculating delight. “I told you you’d be magnificent with snakes.”</p>
<p><em>He’s wary,</em> the little tantilla says into Sasuke’s ear, tongue flicking out to taste the emotions Orochimaru is careful not to show. <em>He doesn’t know I helped you. He doesn’t know I’m here.</em></p>
<p>Sasuke hides her grin. The braids become her signature style, gold pins artfully placed to disguise the glimmer of light reflecting off her first summon’s eyes. He declines anything so grand as a name, so she calls him Hebi and keeps him as something secret that no one knows is there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m running out options,” Kabuto warns. “It’s entirely possible that the sharingan is only carried in living chakra -”</p>
<p>“Take the fucking brain tissue,” Sasuke says, and refuses to let her voice shake as she does.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“<em>Uchiha?</em>” Karin stumbles to a halt, glancing around the clearing as though checking for a trap. “You’re supposed to be dead.”</p>
<p>“Is that what they went with?” Sasuke asks, perking up in interest. “I wondered how they’d explain it. Does everyone think I’m dead, or is that just the official story?”</p>
<p>Karin’s initial shock is fading, and she takes in Sasuke’s outfit and headband with renewed caution. Sasuke isn’t with Suigetsu, for once - a year in and Sound are convinced enough of her loyalty that they’ll just track her down if she runs rather than spend the manpower to have someone guarding her full time - but Karin’s chakra sense is acute enough that she zeroes in on the little snake over Sasuke’s left ear.</p>
<p>For some reason, he seems to make her uneasy.</p>
<p><em>Should we summon the proud one?</em> Hebi hisses.</p>
<p><em>That doesn’t exactly narrow down which snake you mean,</em> she hisses back, disguising it as a thoughtful hum. <em>Not yet.</em></p>
<p>“I doubt everyone thinks I’m dead,” she continues at a more normal volume, turning her head slightly so Hebi is better hidden from view. “Who wastes time rescuing the fish if they’re out to murder someone? It had to be me that took them. They definitely know I’m alive.”</p>
<p>“And you went to <em>Sound?</em> Not Konoha, not Grass, so you decided on the people who were trying to <em>kill</em> everyone?”</p>
<p>“What can I say? I look good in purple. Besides -” her eyes flick up to Karin’s own headband “- you went to Sand, you can hardly talk.”</p>
<p>Karin snorts, ignoring the jab at her allegiances. The mess of which side Sand supported was best left as just that: a mess. It wasn’t surprising that Karin had stayed with them rather than returning to Grass, but she didn’t have the high ground on choosing the better village to run to. “Like fuck, Uchiha,” she says, focussing on the former of Sasuke’s statements. “Purple’s not your colour. You look paler than you did before, I didn’t think it was possible.”</p>
<p>Maturely, Sasuke sticks her tongue out and doesn’t answer. It’s not just the fish that are lacking in sunlight in Orochimaru’s underground bases, but admittedly, the outfit doesn’t help. Maybe it’s time to update it. She’s ahead of schedule with her mission, no one will mind if she makes a detour on the way back.</p>
<p>Speaking of the mission though: “You weren’t here for the dragon-warrior scroll, were you?”</p>
<p>Karin tenses again. “What if I was?”</p>
<p>“Mm. I’d tell you not to bother, I already took it. It was shiny. I couldn’t resist.”</p>
<p>“You fucking -” she breaks off, glaring at Sasuke. “You’re not meant to <em>tell</em> me. I need it for my mission, now I have to attack you.”</p>
<p>“I beat you with one arm, Karin. Now I have all the arms <em>and</em> a snake. Multiple snakes. How’s Gaara?”</p>
<p>The glare gets more frustrated, then Karin shakes her head and abandons it. “Less mad, still murderous. He didn’t like that you died, and he’s still pissed about being used as a beserker bomb in the war.” She pauses, then, plaintively: “I’ve improved too. Suna are better at training me than Grass were.”</p>
<p>If Sasuke hesitates, perhaps she’ll decide against it, so she doesn’t hesitate. She tilts her head invitingly, and her voice is smoothly compelling when she says, “Sound would be better than both.” She flashes a grin at Karin’s wide-eyed stare, and readies her chakra to switch. “Think about it. And for Gaara, if he wants.”</p>
<p>“Uchiha, wait -”</p>
<p>Sasuke’s gone. She lands over a hundred meters away, already sprinting and feeling strangely giddy at her own daring.</p>
<p><em>You’re anxious</em>, Hebi says, coiling tighter around her ear in worry.</p>
<p>“Excited,” Sasuke corrects. “It’s like anxious, but good.”</p>
<p>Hebi considers, then resettles himself more comfortably as he accepts. <em>You’re going the wrong way.</em></p>
<p>“Only a little. Good moods need good mood clothes, Hebi. We’re going shopping.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Dragon-warrior scroll is a shameless reference to Kung Fu Panda, because sometimes you have to cameo a favourite in a tiny insignificant way.</p>
<p>Also: the common name for a tantilla is a centipede snake. I used tantilla because if you google 'centipede snake' you'll get some truly horrifying battles to the death and I didn't want to inflict that on anyone without warning.</p>
<p>Original ficlet from Min (written after chapter 34, so before Orochimaru healed Sasuke's arm):</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>can u imagine. like this won’t get out of my head. it’s established that orochimaru knows how to get in and out of konoha easily - he was raised there, after all. mere anbu probably can’t keep him out. sasuke gets a message saying they know how to make her arm work again. sasuke looks at konoha, at kakashi’s absence, and at the burgeoning chasm between her and team 7, and she goes <i>fuck this</i>.</p>
  <p>she meets someone. maybe not the sound 4, maybe it’s kabuto or another nondescript spy, and they go to the old uchiha district together. sasuke packs her things, and turns her sharingan on to capture her garden once last time. then she sets that shit on fire.</p>
  <p>‘you should probably knock me unconscious for this next part,’ she tells the spy. the anbu chasing after them will see her unconscious body slung over her shoulder. the next morning, konoha wakes to a haze of smoke covering the sky. the civilians are fearful, the ninja uneasy, and team 7, well. they’re not great.</p>
  <p>(the fish suffocate, by the way. the garden is burned to the ground.)</p>
  <p>orochimaru is not unkind. he doesn’t have time for her, really. they’re constantly moving bases, fending off konoha’s spying attempts and probing attacks. maybe sasuke agrees to giving him dna and bone marrow and other samples, until he can clone an uchiha body for himself. but he won’t harm or kill her, at least not until he has what he wants.</p>
  <p>maybe he sends her to the ocean. sasuke doesn’t like water—hates it, really—but armed with the bubble jutsu kakashi made for her, she finds she likes the silence below the water. for once, she doesn’t have to worry about anything. she’s away from konoha’s suspicious eyes, and there’s fresh seafood every day, so it’s honestly a win-win situation.</p>
  <p>gaara and karin are there too. sasuke’s honestly not sure why. suna and konoha aren’t really allies, but they’re not enemies, either.</p>
  <p>gaara probably went after her, worried his only friend was gone. karin says she just wanted to make sure the life force she’d given sasuke hadn’t gone to waste. either way, they show up one day, and they never really leave.</p>
  <p>konoha declares her dead within the month. the memorial stone gains its final uchiha.</p>
  <p>elsewhere, itachi begins the long trek home. the akatsuki are a mess, but they’re content to watch konoha drain itself against sound. he has a little brother to put to rest, and a sannin to kill.<br/></p>
</blockquote>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Sasuke in Sound pt. 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>So, Sasuke's gone to Sound. It's good. Better than Konoha, at least, but following the plan Min laid out part two takes us to the ocean and suddenly life gets better than that.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Suigetsu raises an eyebrow when Sasuke gets back.</p><p>“What?” she asks, feigning innocence but unable to hide her smile. “This? I told you red was my thing.”</p><p>“And the lipstick, is that your thing too?”</p><p>“It could be.” It could also be a defence against the constant dry air being cycled through the vents to stop the underground base going stale. She’s been diligently applying chapstick since she first arrived at the Eastern Hideout, it’s not much of a change to tint it red.</p><p>Besides. It matches her outfit.</p><p>“And earrings,” she adds, and tilts her head for him to see.</p><p>“More like earblings,” he says, grinning at his own appalling pun. “Is excessively gold and sparkly another of your - <em>holy fuck</em> why is there a <em>snake</em> in your hair.”</p><p><em>Mine,</em> Hebi hisses. He raises his head in warning, tail curled jealously round the new additions to Sasuke’s jewellery collection. She lifts a hand and strokes one finger along his back to calm him.</p><p>“Snake? Never. Just part of my hairstyle, there’s no snakes here.”</p><p>Suigetsu doesn’t appear to believe her. She takes the dragon-warrier scroll from her pack and changes the subject.</p><p>“I wasn’t only fixing the purple situation. I was being useful. Collecting secrets to unlimited power and all that. Did you know Suna were after this too? I had to employ all my cunning and trickery to keep it in tact. Really, you should be -”</p><p>“Oh, shut up, princess.”</p><p> </p><p>She doesn't read the scroll. Unlimited power sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Either that or a blatant lie, but if Orochimaru wants to send her chasing after fairy tales and be disappointed when they don't work out, that's his problem. She'll get the scroll, deliver the scroll, very obviously not snoop into the scroll, and leave the rest to him. Like a good minion. Model student, in fact. She hands it over and doesn't even <em>glance</em> at what it says when he opens it, she's that well behaved.</p><p>She walks out the room without looking back, turns several corners and moseys down several other corridors, and finds Hebi in a hissing contest with the fish by the side of the pond.</p><p><em>Well?</em> she asks, lifting him out of reach of the water.</p><p>
  <em>I don't like them. They're awful and they don't talk. They're probably enemies.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The scroll, Hebi. What was on it? </em>
</p><p>Listen. She can be curious about the unlimited power without wanting to use it. It's just common sense.</p><p>Hebi draws himself up to his full (tiny) height. <em>Me,</em> he says proudly. <em>It showed me a picture of me.</em></p><p> </p><p>There are at least a dozen Uchiha eyes that Sasuke can see at first glance, and if the labels on the specimen drawers are to be believed, more that she can’t. Some are packed in ice or held still in tinted jelly; some are in glass jars, revolving slowly as they float in what she guesses is a preserving liquid. Some are cut open on trays and some are connected with wires to power supplies or readout charts. Most are black - one is a rather disturbing milky-grey - but several are brighter shades of red-brown, ranging from almost believable to alarmingly over saturated. Two are flat, sharingan red, though they lack tomoe and seem more artificially coloured than anything else.</p><p>“Impressive,” she says, turning her back on the display. Kabuto isn’t so haphazard as to leave things out like this without reason. If the reason is to unsettle her, she doesn’t want to let him know that it worked.</p><p>“You think?” he asks. “The data is interesting, but the experiments are failures. A shame, but some things in life are destined to go to waste.”</p><p>“A failure just narrows down the options for success. It’s only a waste if you let it be.”</p><p>“Charming. And yet entirely impractical at the same time; it suits you.”</p><p>She scowls. “Can we get on with it? What do you need from me today?”</p><p>Kabuto puts his notes aside and looks up at her. He holds her gaze just long enough for her to feel uncomfortable, then says with no build up and far too much bluntness: “I want to replace one of your eyes with a clone to see if you can activate its sharingan.”</p><p>“What.”</p><p>“You’d get your own eye back when we were done of course, and if the experiment is a success I can -”</p><p>“No,” Sasuke interrupts, shaking her head. “I - <em>no.</em> You’re not taking one of my <em>eyes</em> out. The whole point of growing other ones was to avoid that, what the <em>fuck.</em>”</p><p>He doesn’t cross his arms, but his impatience is clear. “As I said, the eyes are failures. They’re exact copies in every way but the trigger mechanism to activate the sharingan is impossible to replicate.” He pauses, then adds reluctantly, “Orochimaru believes that the fear must be specifically fear of <em>death</em> in order to work. Eyeballs by themselves aren’t known for their survival instincts.”</p><p>“Ok,” Sasuke says, leaving aside the obvious disagreement between Kabuto and Orochimaru over how signficant the whole <em>death</em> connection is. “Implant them in someone. Someone not me. Make them be afraid, make them do the eye thing. Easy fix.” It might be callous. He’d’ve thought of it anyway, it doesn’t matter.</p><p>He has, but he’s also thought of a counter, and he raises an eyebrow at her. “I’d’ve thought you’d know from Hatake. Non-Uchiha can use sharingan, but not turn them on or off.”</p><p>“<em>He</em> can’t. He got his eye in the middle of a warzone after his old one was gouged out with a sword, he’s hardly a great example.”</p><p>“None the less,” Kabuto dismisses, “Data is more valuable when there are fewer variables to contaminate it. You are the only Uchiha available, therefore we use you.”</p><p><em>Data</em>. Sasuke bites her tongue on what, exactly, Kabuto could do with his data, and tries to be rational.</p><p>It could work. It could definitely work - or at least, she can’t easily see how it couldn’t. Kabuto clones her eyes, takes her original ones out, and implants the new. She activates them and he swaps them back again; she’s left with her sharingan, Orochimaru gets his, and all it costs her is a couple of transplant surgeries and a moment of fear to awaken the cloned eyes.</p><p>But if she does it once, if that gets cemented as the only way to do it, they’ll ask her to do it again. At some point it’ll be more efficient to keep her on a permanent rotation of swapping activated clone eyes for new clone eyes, and her original ones will get lost somewhere down the chain.</p><p><em>The spitting cobra,</em> Hebi hisses, stirred by her agitation. <em>He’s bigger than us, summon the spitting cobra.</em></p><p><em>He wears glasses. The venom won’t reach him,</em> Sasuke hisses back. She keeps her voice low - she doesn’t need Kabuto to overhear. The moment gives her the thought she needs, and she shakes her head again, turning back to him with more confidence.</p><p>“It won’t work.”</p><p>“It’s poor practice to write off an experiment before you’ve tried,” Kabuto says.</p><p>“It’s also stupid to waste time on something you know is wrong. If fear isn’t enough to activate them, if it has to be fear of <em>death,</em> then I can’t provide it - I’d know it was a set up. I’d be afraid, but I’d know I wouldn’t die.”</p><p>Kabuto frowns, tapping his fingers against the workbench. “You’ve been making progress with sensing killing intent. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”</p><p>She suppresses a shudder at the memory of his killing intent, and covers it with a pointed scowl. “From you? Yes it will. You don’t have killing intent, you have turn-people-into-fucking-specimens intent. There’s nothing death-y about it.”</p><p>He sends her a chilling look. “Believe me, I’m perfectly capable of killing you if the situation calls for it.”</p><p><em>A new summon,</em> Hebi offers. <em>If the spitting venom won’t work, call someone new.</em></p><p>“I believe you <em>can</em>,” Sasuke argues, “But in the situation we’re talking about, I also believe you <em>won’t</em>. The eyes won’t activate. Think of something else.”</p><p>Kabuto goes to deliver a no-doubt scathing retort to that, but cuts himself off to hum thoughtfully at her instead. “Something else.” He keeps tapping his finger against the bench, a steady, rhythmic beat that sets Sasuke’s nerves on edge. “Very well. I have sufficient genetic material to work from for the time being. You can go.”</p><p> </p><p>The third snake Sasuke summons, with Hebi threaded through her braid and hissing instructions in her ear, is a king cobra. Like the spitting cobra it’s hooded and venomous; unlike the spitting cobra it’s large enough that when it rears back on its tail its head brushes the ceiling of the room.</p><p>Her head. She doesn’t give a name, but she’s unmistakeably a she, and the black of her scales is banded with vibrant yellow-gold warning stripes.</p><p><em>Snake-eater,</em> Hebi hisses smugly. The cobra turns her head towards Sasuke at the sound, and if she takes any offence from the title, she doesn’t show it. <em>Let them hide their eyes from you now.</em></p><p> </p><p>Sasuke’s not going to say she and Suigetsu were relocated to the Southern Hideout <em>because</em> she got in an argument with Kabuto and then summoned a snake-eating cobra in her next training session with Orochimaru, but she’d be lying if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. Officially, they’re there to act as prison wardens, watching the inhabitants for any useful traits and keeping an eye on those who could be converted to work for Sound. Unofficially, the hideout is in the middle of an ocean, and one of the very few that doesn’t have a Kabuto-lab tucked away in the centre of it. It’s either a peace offering or an attempt to keep her out the way and Sasuke is more than happy to oblige.</p><p>“Look, fishies,” Suigetsu declares, flinging his arms out towards the horizon. “The biggest pond you ever saw. <em>And</em> this one’ll have plants growing in it.”</p><p>Sasuke elbows him in the ribs. “Don’t put the koi in the sea. They’re freshwater fish, the salt will kill them.”</p><p>“I’ve got to put them somewhere. They’re getting too big for me to carry them all around at once.” He puts a hand to his chest and brings it away with a sphere of water to demonstrate; the koi inside is at least twice the size it’d been when they moved out of Konoha. It swims in a lazy circle, fins trailing behind it and tail flicking testingly at the edge of the water.</p><p>Hebi burrows deeper into Sasuke’s braid, glaring at the fish from the safety of her hair.</p><p>“Help me build them an actual pond, then,” she says, pushing Suigetsu’s hands away to give Hebi space. She squints up the angular cliffs that make up the island. “You reckon one of those has a rooftop terrace? An actual terrace, not just a railing across a window that you can lean out on. Or maybe a mini-plateau area at the top, so long as it’s vaguely flat.”</p><p>Suigetsu scoffs. “It’s a prison base. Shall I ask around for an ice cream parlour for you as well?”</p><p>“A rooftop terrace would give the fish an outside pond.”</p><p>He sucks the koi back into his chest and resettles his sword on his shoulders. “Terrace, you say. I’ll let the builders know.”</p><p> </p><p>There are no builders at the Southern Hideout. There are several prisoners with earth affinities, and no one to stop Sasuke accessing the pump room and cannibalising some parts. Nothing anyone will miss but by the time she’s finished she has a working filter for the newly-built pond on her newly-built rooftop terrace, and even a passable area of shade from a rocky overhang that will provide shelter for the fish until the plant cover grows.</p><p>It’s not quite a garden - somewhat lacking in flowers for that - but it’s also nothing like the oppressive underground corridors of the Eastern Hideout. If she sits under the overhang on the edge of her pond she can watch the storms roll in over the sea, and if she goes down to the shore and wraps her bubble around herself she can drift underwater and watch the rain make patterns on the waves.</p><p>Sometimes Suigetsu joins her. He’s difficult to see, his edges blurring into nothing until he’s little more than a face floating on the surface. Sometimes he brings the fish - one or two, he rarely takes more than that out a time now that they have a decent home to live in - and hovers around them in a protective cocoon of fresh water as they swim and investigate the ocean floor.</p><p><em>Do you ever want to explore?</em> Sasuke asks Hebi, lifting her fingers so the little snake can come down if he wants.</p><p>He doesn’t want. <em>You’re warm,</em> he insists. <em>And you give me shinies. Why would I ever leave?</em></p><p>
  <em>Not forever. You can always explore and come back when you’re done.</em>
</p><p><em>Shinies,</em> Hebi repeats, and repositions the closest gold-red hairpin to better reflect the light.</p><p> </p><p>She’s in the Land of Hot Water when she comes across them. She’s been in Hot Water a lot over the past couple of months since moving to the Southern Hideout, and she’s decided she likes it. It’s a volcanic country, older than the chains of black-rock islands that form off the coast, but younger than Fire or Rice which sit to the west of it. The earth is rich, very fertile and densely forested, but the forests are thick tangles of narrow-trunked trees that survive by growing <em>up</em> rather than out, forming an almost solid canopy that blocks out the sun.</p><p>Underneath, it’s warm, dark, and the lack of horizontal branches make it treacherous for all but the most experienced shinobi to navigate. Even a Konoha nin could struggle if they weren’t paying attention, more used to the spreading behemoths of Fire country than the whippy vines and free-hanging roots of Hot Water. Not that there are many Konoha nin - Hot Water’s known for being peaceful. Most of its economy is built on hot springs and tourism rather than murder and missions.</p><p>That might be part of why she likes it. No ninja, no death, lots of plants. Too many hotels to ever need to camp. Much appreciation of clean towels and street stalls selling sweets. And, it has frogs. Tiny little yellow and black ones that Hebi insists he can eat and that Sasuke patiently reminds him are poisonous. And birds, and orchids, and <em>papaya</em> and -</p><p>It’s a good country. Sasuke approves. She’s taking her time passing through it, she’s distracted because she thought she saw a monkey, the last thing she expects to stumble across is Chouji facing off a missing nin, and she potentially throws the shuriken before she considers the consequences.</p><p><em>Fight?</em> Hebi asks, working his way forwards to look.</p><p><em>Um,</em> Sasuke answers. The shuriken has a latent fire jutsu attached to it. When the enemy kunoichi slaps it out the air with her sword the spark ignites it, and both sword and arm go up in flames. <em>I didn’t mean to do that.</em></p><p>Chouji didn’t even need her help. He’s fine. The kunoichi’s strong, but Chouji’s stronger, and if anything the random fire shuriken from the trees is just distracting him and Sasuke should leave while she has the chance. She’s lucky; neither of them were paying attention to her, and even if they try to now the fire will have wrecked their night vision enough that they won’t be able to see her. It’s careless to be caught off guard by someone she hasn’t thought about for over a year, but it’s an easy mistake to recover from.</p><p>She turns to push off from the bark and go, and her feet stick in place and don’t move. She blinks, frowning at them, then at the hand she’s also holding the tree with. There’s a thick black shadow holding it in place.</p><p>“Ino," she hears Shikamaru saying urgently, "don’t -”</p><p>“Oh my god,” Ino says, shaking him off and stepping out from her cover. “Sasuke?”</p><p>Sasuke blinks, panics, and blurts, “Who?”</p><p>Crap. She didn’t mean to do that.</p><p>“<em>You.</em> Sasuke, you -” Her eyes flick up to Sasuke’s headband and her mouth pulls tight at the musical note she sees there. Sasuke ignores her, frantically keeping all traces of anything from her face as she tests how much leeway Shikamaru’s given her with his shadow. “You don’t know your name?”</p><p><em>Now fight?</em> Hebi checks.</p><p>Not much leeway, is the answer, and when Shikamaru moves up to join Ino he forces Sasuke to drop out the tree and come forwards with him. She keeps one ear on the vague sounds of Chouji finishing his fight with the kunoichi in the background and renews her attempts to leave - facing all three of them is <em>really</em> not on the cards.</p><p>“Sasuke,” Ino tries again. She’s white-faced and shaken, but having Shikamaru there steadies her. When Sasuke still doesn’t reply she stretches out the pause, then gathers herself and changes to a brisker tone. “Why did you help my teammate?”</p><p>Well. Because Sasuke’s an idiot, but that won’t go down well. Should she lie? The shadow forms a chakra barrier she can’t get through, but it doesn’t stop her using her own chakra and if the sealless fire-light jutsu she’s trying to perform would just <em>work</em> so she could break Shikamaru’s hold and switch out -</p><p>It sparks against her wrist, then flares red-gold and forces the shadow to retreat. Shikamaru’s already lunging, but Sasuke’s faster and she doesn’t waste any time in kawariming away.</p><p><em>Now we run,</em> she hisses, and can’t help the bubble of adrenalin-fuelled delight as she makes a clean escape.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“What if it wasn’t her?” Chouji asks. “I only caught a glimpse -”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It was her. Shuriken, fire, the stupid kawarimi - it was her.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ino crosses her arms tighter around herself, turning to face Chouji so she doesn’t have to see Shikamaru pace. “It looked like her. That’s all we know.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Shikamaru makes a frustrated sound, spinning on his heel towards her. “Damnit Ino -”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“That’s all we know,” Ino repeats. “She didn’t recognise us. She didn’t respond to her name. We saw someone who looked like a dead friend, we can’t jump to conclusions.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She was never dead, don’t give me that bullshit. And now she’s -”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Shikamaru!” He stops, drawn up short by her tone. “You’re being irrational. Even if it was her, we don’t have enough to go on - she didn’t leave a trail, there’s no leads to track her with, nothing.” Her voice slips on that last word, her own stress showing through, and she takes a breath to calm herself. “Being rash gets us nowhere. If it was her then - then we need to think. We can’t do anything without a plan.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He’s silent for a moment, then deliberately relaxes his shoulders and forces the tension away. “Sometimes,” he mutters, “I really hate thinking.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I won’t tell your dad,” Ino promises, and offers him a weak smile in relief.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sasuke puts them out of her mind as crosses the ocean to home. The plan was always to leave, she left, and dwelling on it doesn’t do anything to change either fact. She can’t remember if she told them not to care about her or not - them, <em>any</em> of them - but she knows she never wanted them to, and she refuses to feel guilty for doing what she had to to survive.</p><p>So. She doesn’t. It’s a calm day, the sort where the sea bulges and dips in rolling swells that never disturb the glassy surface, and as she approaches the water is clear enough to see the rocks and seaweed underneath. There’s a dock on the sheltered side of the island but Sasuke’s approaching on foot and she ignores it, aiming instead for one of the smaller sandy coves. From there she can either go straight up the cliff-face and in through a window, or round to the front and take the -</p><p>Wait.</p><p>Sand?</p><p>“<em>Gaara?</em>”</p><p>The sand seems to pause thoughtfully, then ripples, pulling itself into a familiar shape.</p><p>“We’re on the terrace,” Gaara - Gaara’s sand clone - says. “Karin wanted to surprise you.” He tilts his head, then adds, “I’m getting told off for letting you know we’re here.”</p><p>“I’m surprised,” Sasuke promises him. “I’m - this is the <em>best</em> surprise. Why are you here? How did you get here? Wait, I’m coming up. Should I come up, are you coming down - <em>hwep.</em>” The sand around her feet rises suddenly, a single flat disk just large enough to stand on that carries her a good metre into the air. Sasuke crouches on instinct to help her balance and it’s only that it’s <em>Gaara</em> that stops her kawariming away.</p><p>“I’ll take you,” Gaara’s clone says, then dissolves back into sand as the disk lifts Sasuke vertically up.</p><p><em>Anxious?</em> Hebi checks in response to her sudden jump in heart-rate. He takes one look at the ground rapidly disappearing below them and flinches. <em>Panic. Panic-anxious. Summon everyone, do it now.</em></p><p><em>Excited,</em> Sasuke assures him. She can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of her. <em>The good kind. The <strong>best</strong> kind. He won’t let us fall.</em></p><p>Hebi looks again, flinches again, and triple-spirals himself around her braid. <em>Why didn’t he let us walk,</em> he complains. <em>This is awful.</em></p><p>Because he’s impatient, is the answer, but so is Sasuke; as soon as they’re close enough to the terrace for her to see something to switch with she does, and tumbles over the railing in a flail of anticipation and delight.</p><p>“You <em>came</em>. You actually - oh my <em>god</em> you’re <em>here</em>.” Karin’s closest, so Karin’s the one she reaches for, tugging on her sleeve her collar her shirt until she’s in a good enough position to throw an arm around. It’s not a hug, not quite - she doesn’t know how Karin would take it - but Suigetsu is not the touchy-feely sort and Sasuke is; after so long without someone she can properly be close to she doesn’t feel like letting go.</p><p>“...Ok,” Suigetsu says from the other side of the terrace. “What?”</p><p>Karin flashes him a smirk. “Like I said, water-brain. We go way back.”</p><p>Suigetsu draws himself up, arguments ready and waiting to fly, and Sasuke scowls. “No,” she tells him. “No fighting. We like these people, they’re good people.” She leans around Karin to make eye contact with Gaara, and holds out a hopeful hand. He steps forward and takes it; it’s not quite the same level of plastered-against that she has with Karin (also, what, Karin has just slung an arm <em>over</em> Sasuke’s <em>shoulders</em> like she’s some kind of short-arse that Karin can just be taller than, how is that allowed) but Gaara’s smiling as he slots in next to them, and he threads their fingers together to turn the hand-hold into something more comfortable, and it’s <em>great.</em></p><p>Suigetsu scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “How are they good people? They’re random missing nin from Suna, they shouldn’t even be here. The fuck did they find this place, anyway?”</p><p>“Sasuke invited us,” Karin says smugly.</p><p>“I invited them,” Sasuke agrees. “Wait, missing nin? Genuinely seriously? You’re not going back to Sand, you’re staying?”</p><p>“You got better at recruitment,” Gaara explains. “Apparently your two-line argument was compelling and your exit was ridiculously cool.” He blinks, then adds, “Karin’s glaring at me over your head. I think I’m going to be told off again.”</p><p>“Don’t listen to him, he takes things too literally and doesn’t understand - don’t <em>laugh</em> at me, I’ll turn around and walk out of here, see if I won’t - <em>Sasuke</em> -”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>... there will be a part three. Don't look at me like that, it's not my fault.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Kiba [Art]</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>immortal_shapeshifter asked for a picture of Kiba with his new haircut and scars from chapter 34, and voila.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>The bandages around his head were gone. So was a fair chunk of hair, leaving him with shaved sides under his usual messy brown that clearly showed the spider-web of lightning burn scars from where Orochimaru attacked him. They fanned out from just over his ear up to his temple and down to the edge of his jaw, and in the other direction curved almost to the base of his skull, and though he wore his familiar fluffy parka he kept the hood deliberately down so as not to hide them.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“It’s so people know which ear I’m deaf in,” he quipped, tilting his chin up. “This side got fried, that side I’m just ignoring you. I wanted people to be sure.”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Sasuke and Treason</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sasuke's loyalty is not in question, but she's never been loyal to Konoha. She gets away with it until she doesn't.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Written after chapter 37 (latest chapter as of posting) and building off the conversation between Jiraiya and Kakashi; this is set in a version of the not-too-distant future where Sasuke slips up and gets arrested. What precisely she got arrested <i>for</i> is left deliberately vague and entirely up to you to fill in as you like, it's not really the point of this particular ficlet.</p><p>(I mean, I have some ideas for what she did, but shh. Secrets.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Konoha is wrong,” Sasuke says. There is no betrayal in her tone. She’s known it all her life. Bitterness, a deep seated resentment and a certainty that says she won’t be swayed, but the main thing is that she doesn’t sound betrayed.</p><p>“The world is wrong,” Jiraiya corrects. “We’re playing the same game as everyone else.”</p><p>She looks away from him in disgust, and Jiraiya isn’t stupid. He knows what she thinks of him. Sometimes, he even thinks she’s right, but this isn’t a story about his cowardice and the ways he’s run away. “What else can we do?” he asks her. “Be naive, believe the best of people and suffer the consequences when they play us for fools?”</p><p>“Oh, because reducing a complex issue to <em>my way or death</em> isn’t manipulative at all.”</p><p>She doesn’t quite tell him to piss off. Her body language is doing that for her, but Jiraiya settles back more comfortably in his seat and decides to pretend he can’t see it.</p><p>“I didn’t say death,” he says. “But if you want to talk politics, we can.” He pretends he can’t see her glare either. “Chakra is dangerous. The purpose of hidden villages isn’t to train ninja and lord it over the civilians; it’s to <em>control</em> ninja and keep civilians safe. We’re peacekeepers.”</p><p>“You’re the shittest peacekeepers since the fucking jedi. We’re literally at war <em>right now</em>, what the hell.”</p><p>“Jedi?”</p><p>She blinks. He can see her running the sentence back through her mind, but she shakes her head and refuses to elaborate. He doesn’t press; there are more important things to focus on just now.</p><p>Plus, there’s something… open about her honesty, and he doesn’t want to pressure her so much that she loses it. She’s hurt and angry and scared, she hates with a fierceness that surprises and worries him in turn, and the secrets she keeps make her paranoid and distrustful of everyone around her. If she was all that and a liar on top, he doesn’t know if he could save her. But the way she lives through her emotions, the fact that all of this stems from how deeply she <em>cares</em> - that’s something he can work with. He thinks. He hopes.</p><p>Please, god, let him be able to work with it. For Naruto’s sake, if not for hers.</p><p>“The hidden villages go to war,” he says, going back to the conversation. “They fight other hidden villages. Ninja die, peace treaties are drawn, and the war ends. Life goes on.”</p><p>“Until the next war.”</p><p>“Until the next war. But: there will be people to have a next war. No matter how badly damaged Konoha or Sound are, Fire and Rice will survive. Even after the last great ninja war when Iwa was all but crippled, Earth as a country was fine. Ninja wars stay with ninjas, and the vast majority of the population are safe.”</p><p>She scowls, but she’s not dismissing him. She’s listening. “Sound are sabotaging everywhere,” she points out. “Blowing up bridges, shutting down supply routes. That’s not just Konoha that pays for it.”</p><p>He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table between them. “True,” he allows. “But Konoha accounts for a tiny fraction of the people in Fire. Most of what Orochimaru is doing has very little impact on the country as a whole - the capital is almost entirely unaffected, and the daimyos of both Fire and Rice would be quick to step in if their own economies were disrupted.”</p><p>“Oh, well, if the <em>daimyos</em> are fine.”</p><p>He frowns. “You don’t like daimyos?”</p><p>She pauses at that. Her shoulders shift, like she wants to lift a hand and run it through her hair, and she makes a frustrated sound when she can’t. “I don’t like categorising people as being more or less important,” she finally says. Her nose wrinkles, thinking through what she’s saying, and Jiraiya braces himself as she works it out. “People who think they’re important have a bad habit of screwing over everyone else. Other people don’t matter, so it’s fine to do what you like with them to make life a bit more convenient for you.” She tilts her head, then continues, slower. “Like sending them out to die. Like… sending them to war with each other so none of the collateral falls on you.” She waits for him to stop her. He doesn’t, just holds her gaze, and watches all those honest emotions flashing over her face as she takes his silence and interprets it.</p><p>“We’re bait,” she concludes in a small voice. “When the clans were in charge, everyone was caught in the fighting. They were too big. But put the clans in hidden villages, make the villages fight themselves…” Her breath hitches. “The clans die. The civilians win. No one ever bothers to attack the civilians because why would you when the villages make better targets.” She looks at him with wide eyes, and she’s pale to start with but even under the artificial light in the interrogation room she manages to go paler.</p><p>“Chakra’s dangerous,” she says, repeating his earlier words. “People are afraid of it. They’re trying to kill it.”</p><p>For a moment, Jiraiya wonders how much she knows about her own clan’s death. Enough to blame the village for it, that much at least is clear - but enough to know how it happened? Did she blame the village for failing her brother, for turning him into a monster who would murder everyone but her? Or did she know he acted on orders? If she did, did she know <em>why</em> - and if she knew why, did she think he’d been lied to? Or did she accept that her clan were planning a coup and think life would’ve been better if they’d been able to complete it?</p><p>He doesn’t know. She might be honest, but these are secrets he suspects she’s been keeping too long for him to get out of her here.</p><p>“Not quite,” he says instead. “Contain it - the people who use it - yes, but not kill it.” Not most of the time, anyway, but this isn't a conversation about bloodline purges and he doesn’t want to muddy the waters. “You’re right that life was difficult under the clans. They had the countries in a stranglehold, and if Hashirama-sama hadn’t founded the villages to break the power of the biggest clans, we wouldn’t have a fraction of the progress we see around us today.”</p><p>“Break the power of one big clan in particular, you mean.”</p><p>He ignores that. Maybe it’s because he’s clanless, but inherited grudges like hers seem pointless at the best of times. At least there aren’t many Senju left for Sasuke to take an irrational dislike to because of it, and if she ever does come across Tsunade and try to pick a fight over ancient history, well, good luck to her.</p><p>“The villages gather chakra-users in one place. It stops people trying to teach themselves and dying from it - or, far too often, taking out everyone around them by accident. It stops ninja abusing their powers to take advantage of people who are weaker than them, and it provides a way to police missing nin that civilians themselves wouldn’t be able to do anything about. And yes, when it comes to war, it focusses attacks on people who are best able to defend against them rather than pulling both countries into endless cycles of attrition that leave everyone with nothing and no way left to rebuild.” It’s a very simplified view, but it’s the truth. “You said I was being manipulative when I reduced a complex issue to <em>my way or death</em>, but I wasn’t. A single ninja can kill a whole town if he feels like it. Some can kill a whole city. The system we live in is set up to ensure this doesn't happen - both to prevent ninja going rogue and becoming a danger to those around them, and to deal with them if they do. There might be parts of it that are unpleasant and things it would be nicer if we didn’t have to do, but the risks of ninja <em>not</em> being controlled by hidden villages are too big to ignore. Without hidden villages, people die. What Konoha does is what Konoha needs to do to survive, and therefore what it needs to do to keep Fire country protected.” He takes a breath, and fights the urge to fidget. He wants to lean forward again, to take his elbows off the metal table between them and reach his hands out to her until she understands, but he knows better. She wouldn’t take it well.</p><p>She’s holding herself still. Her eyes are fixed on him, her posture is defensively hunched, and her arms are tense against the shackles as though she wants to cross them in front of her as a barrier to keep him away.</p><p>She’s so damn <em>small.</em></p><p>And if Jiraiya fails to convince her, the punishment for her treason is death.</p><p>“Sasuke,” he says, one step shy of begging. “Please. No one is asking you to give up what you think is right. Just - see the bigger picture. Acknowledge that sometimes these things are necessary, that the end goal is worth what Konoha is forced to do along the way.”</p><p>She’s still a genin. Still the last Uchiha. She might not like that some people are important, but she is, and Jiraiya’s done more with less when he’s needed to in the past. He’s the reason Tsunade isn’t a missing nin, the reason Kakashi is still considered loyal despite the mission he once took to kill the Hokage - he can be the reason Sasuke survives.</p><p>All he needs is for her to let him.</p><p>She looks away. Her hair falls in front of her face, no longer held back by her gold pins - they were taken off her on suspicion of being weapons. She isn’t wearing her headband, and without it, her fringe does a good job of hiding her expression.</p><p>“A necessary evil is still an evil,” she says, and for a hopeless second, Jiraiya’s heart falls. Then she laughs, bitter, exhausted, barely sounding like a laugh at all. “What do you want me to do?”</p><p>He doesn’t sigh in relief. Or close his eyes, or drop his head forwards or let his own exhaustion show. “Hidden villages run on absolute loyalty,” he says. There will be restrictions, she will be monitored - but when he walks out of this room, he will not be leaving her to die.</p><p>“Because how else do you keep the super-powered killers under control?” She quirks her lips in a deprecating half-smirk. “Has no one ever tried using chakra as something <em>other</em> than a weapon?”</p><p>Optimistically, he answers her almost-smile with a cautious grin of his own. “Hidden villages also run on d-ranks,” he jokes.</p><p>“What a shame defeatist brain-washing can’t buy those as well.”</p><p>His grin falls. “Sasuke -”</p><p>“No,” she interrupts. When she lifts her head, her eyes are red. It’s the first time he’s ever seen her sharingan - the cuffs she’s wearing restrict her chakra enough that she can’t hide her eyes under a genjutsu, but apparently not enough to stop her activating them. He flares his own chakra in an abrupt <em>stand down</em> to anyone who might be watching, and wishes she had better timing.</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“Uchiha,” she corrects him. “I am not Sasuke to you. You are not my teacher. You are the person who has to explain to Naruto why the village killed me if I die, but you are nothing to me.”</p><p>No. No, don’t do this. Don’t be so <em>stupid.</em></p><p>“The village isn’t going to kill you,” he tries, desperate to salvage something, and she interrupts him again.</p><p>“Because I’m going to swear loyalty? Take my punishment, do what I’m told, never be a threat to anyone ever again?” She scoffs, shaking her head in a disgusted movement. “I’m <em>Uchiha.</em> You all think we’re traitors anyway, why the hell should I bother trying to pretend I'm not?”</p><p>So she does know why her clan was killed. Why did no one follow it up with her when it happened, why did no one <em>know</em> how deeply her distrust of Konoha ran. She’d been <em>seven years old</em> and left to find her own answers and no one had even checked which ones she'd found - is it any wonder she hadn't understood? And now she was paying the price for a mistake that she hadn’t even been the one to make. Jiraiya hates it. He hates it, and he hates that he knows how fucked up the hidden villages are but he hates even more that he still believes they’re necessary.</p><p>Necessary. A necessary evil is still an evil. She’s right, but where, he wants to ask her, is any other choice.</p><p>He’s <em>trying.</em></p><p>“Because I wouldn’t do it,” he says bluntly, changing tack. “I’m the coward man, aren’t I? I wouldn’t tell Naruto why you died.”</p><p>She scowls at him. He presses on. “Kakashi would work it out. We’d pin your murder on someone else - Orochimaru, probably. He’s sprung people from our cells before, it’s not that much of a stretch to think he’d break in to get to you.”</p><p>“And do what?” she challenges. “If Naruto thinks I’m with Sound, he’ll go after me.” There’s no trace of doubt. She knows he would, and so does Jiraiya.</p><p>“He will. And he’ll find your body, eyes gouged out, left in just the right place to give us justification to do anything we want in retaliation.” His stomach threatens to turn, but he doesn’t let it. “It’ll be a good death,” he throws out, deliberately taunting. “We’ll stage it so it looks like you were still one of us. Fought Orochimaru to the end, then died with your honour intact.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> your honour," she spits, jerking her shoulders forward in an angry, jagged movement that makes the cuffs rattle against her wrists.</p><p>Jiraiya raises an eyebrow. “If you were doing that to hide the sound of your thumb dislocating, don’t bother. It won’t be enough to get your hands free. Like I said though, Kakashi would work it out. What do you think it would do to him? You’re right, I’m not your sensei, but he is. He'll think he’s the one that failed you. That it'll be his responsibility you’re gone.”</p><p>“Stay the hell away from him -”</p><p>“Sorry.” He shrugs, nonchalantly callous. “No can do. He’s too close to going off the rails as it is, we can’t afford for him to decide we’re an enemy. One of those city-destroying ninja I mentioned; the whole point of Konoha is to keep him leashed or put him down.” She bares her teeth at him, eyes spinning and the red so bright it almost seems to glow. When he doesn't react - when he can't trust himself to react, he feels sick but this is the only thing he can think of and he's damned if he gives up now - she struggles against the cuffs again, but they’re chained too tightly to the floor behind her back. <em>Nearly,</em> Jiraiya thinks, <em>nearly there.</em> He taps his fingers in a subtle pattern that will interfere with the monitoring jutsu and stop anyone listening in from catching his next words.</p><p>“Of course,” he says, voice dropping to make sure he isn't overheard. “If we’re talking city-destroying ninja, then there’s someone else we’d need to contain.”</p><p>She freezes. Her face floods with too many emotions to read - shock, denial, panic, <em>rage</em> - then it closes down to a frigid, empty blankness.</p><p>“He’d kill you,” she says flatly.</p><p>“Maybe. I am a sannin though. Everyone seems to forget that. But I never said I’d be the one going after him, and however strong he is, he’s only one man.”</p><p>The blankness gets colder. “He’d kill all of you,” she insists, but her voice threatens to crack and her sharingan are no longer spinning.</p><p>Distantly, Jiraiya notes that they’ve gained an extra tomoe. When he gets out of this hellish room he’ll consider what it means that she’s more afraid of her sensei and her brother dying than she is of being executed herself, and maybe when he does he’ll allow himself a moment of bitter grief for the person she could have been if Konoha had done right by her - but for now, he has a job to do.</p><p>“Maybe,” he repeats, quiet, calm, as reasonable as he knows how to be. “But is it worth the risk?”</p><p>One second. Two. It stretches, and Jiraiya reinstates the monitoring jutsu. Whatever answer she gives will be her final one; he’s done everything he can to save her.</p><p>Three. Four.</p><p>Five.</p><p>She closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they’re black, and lowered in defeat.</p><p>“What do you want me to do?” she asks a second time. The bite is gone; there's no more sarcasm, she isn't going to fight him anymore.</p><p>He nods, hides any reaction he has to her broken acceptance, and starts explaining the conditions of her release.</p><p>A necessary evil is still an evil. He’s kept her alive; that has to be worth enough to offset it. Sometimes there is no right answer, and sometimes all your choices are shit, but you make the best of what you have and remind yourself it’s wishful thinking to ever ask for more.</p><p>That’s the world he lives in. He’s tried to change it too many times already. It doesn’t work. All he can hope is that Sasuke will learn to live with it before her idealism destroys her, and all he can do is watch out for her until she does. Even if she hates him for it. Even if she turns Naruto and Sakura against him as well, if she’s there to do it, then he hasn’t failed her.</p><p>It has to be enough.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My original thought for this was that Sasuke would end up in ANBU, but then Jiraiya took over and I was curious to see where it went. </p><p>If I <i>had</i> taken it to ANBU though I want you all to know that ANBU would basically be Konoha's version of Suicide Squad, full of criminals and would-be missing nins who can be neatly blackmailed / threatened into taking all the shitty jobs that no one else wants to do. At first they think Sasuke's one of those weird law-abiding ninja who actually bought into that 'ANBU are the elite and always loyal to the hokage' crap, then someone says "hey wait I know her, she's here for treason" and everyone goes "eeeeyyyy one of us" and she gets adopted by the disillusioned dregs of society and probably stages a revolution at some point and breaks them all out idk i hadn't got that far yet but believe me it would've been great.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Sasuke and Shikamaru: Sasuke</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Listen. Sasuke's a hot mess. This is a fact.</p><p>In light of this fact, her reaction to learning Shikamaru likes her is entirely reasonable.</p><p>(Sasuke's point of view for chapter 11: Sasuke and Shikamaru)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Rising_Fandoms asked for something sweet featuring Shikamaru, and this does, as requested, contain a sweet scene featuring Shikamaru.</p><p>The rest... I'm going to slap a mature label on it, but it's Sasuke's very blunt kind of mature, and if you suffer from second hand embarrassment please reconsider your life choices because she's one of the most awkward beans you're ever going to meet.</p><p>Canon note: The original ficlet was written after chapter 26 of the main fic; for this ficlet I've added in Urushi, so you'll want to have read the main fic up to chapter 37 to understand why he's there.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ok, so. Here’s the thing. Sasuke and Shikamaru are apparently dating now, which is a wild concept in itself, but the thing is, right. The thing. The one that Sasuke isn’t ever going to tell anyone.</p><p>She doesn’t actually <em>like</em> Shikamaru.</p><p>No, wait, that’s not right. That sounds like she doesn’t get on with him, which she does. She means like as <em>like</em>-like, she doesn’t like-like him. Um, love. She doesn’t love him. Like that. Not that she doesn’t love him, that’s not true, but also love is big and complicated and - the point is. The point. It’s. She’s trying to make a point. Um.</p><p>Start again.</p><p>Sex. Sasuke does not want to do the, um, sex things. With Shikamaru. No adult times. Or. Stuff.</p><p>Dear god, this is horrific. Have you not learnt by now that Sasuke and anything vaguely sexually related is a recipe for an awkward, stilted <em>mess</em> for christ’s sake she still doesn’t know exactly how old she is and she spent half her life trying to be the wrong damn gender, how please is she meant to navigate the, the, <em>naked situations.</em></p><p>I mean, come on. She’s a jounin and she still turns Plushie-tan around when she changes. Bleeding, in need of bandage assistance, even at the beach in a one-piece and a shit-ton of sun cream - that’s fine. That’s, that’s semi-undressed with a purpose. But naked for being naked? Or for showing off nakedness to other people or (holy frick) just being <em>comfortable</em> in your skin?</p><p>No. She does not. Her skin has surgery scars. The body inside it, despite the best efforts of several hormone replacement concoctions, is angular and short and only barely curvy enough to warrant a bra.</p><p>Which she wears anyway, thank you very much. She went with Sakura for emotional support the first time and ended up with a series of very practical, very comfortable sports bras; she got forcibly dragged by Ino the second time and ended up with two baby blue things with bows on them, one white one that’s padded to hell and back and is frankly terrifying but also kind of confidence boosting at the same time, and a lacy, uh, contraption, with criss-crossed straps and too many hooks. She hasn’t actually worn that one outside the fitting room yet but she <em>has</em> it, ok. She’s just. Waiting for the opportune moment.</p><p>It’s <em>see through.</em></p><p>Moving on.</p><p>Sex! Is not a thing she’s ever thought about. Or been attracted to. Not that means she’s <em>un</em>attracted to Shikamaru - from a purely objective standpoint he more than qualifies as hot, and he smells nice, and his hands are all big with calloused fingers and warm when he holds her with them, and. And all of that stuff is <em>fine</em>.</p><p>Please don’t ask her what he smells of. The combined efforts of Kakashi and Pakkun have been trying to teach her scents for years, she still has no idea. He smells of Shikamaru, it’s a good smell, when he runs out of his soap and is too lazy to replace it he smells of jasmine and jojoba oil because that’s what Sasuke likes to use when she doesn’t have to be boring for missions. That’s the extent of Sasuke’s knowledge. It’s good knowledge, ok. Don’t judge her.</p><p>But making the leap from <em>I like this person, can I keep him</em> to <em>I like this person, can he take all my clothes off and lick me </em>(it was lick her or ravish her, she’s dying even considering either, please stop reading this part Sasuke’s ears are so red she’s going to set her hair on fire) - the leap! It’s! Not a leap Sasuke knows how to make.</p><p>With anyone, not just with Shikamaru.</p><p>She does not need the birds and the bees talk. Go away. She knows how it works, she survived (barely) those lessons at the academy (the fecking <em>academy</em> do you have any idea how awkward it is to be in the same classroom as a Inuzuka Fucking Kiba when some poor teacher’s trying to explain the purpose of a honeypot mission, and all Sasuke can say is thank god she was with the boys for that because if she’d had to be anywhere near academy-era Ino or Sakura she would’ve self combusted on the <em>spot</em>) and she was, actually, a full adult in her old-world life with all the theoretical knowledge that came with it. So. So there.</p><p>Why is Sasuke talking about this. For what reason is she subjecting herself to - oh. Right.</p><p>Her first reaction to realising that Shikamaru liked her was to be afraid of it.</p><p>It’s stupid. She knows that now, and she knew it then, but it’s just… People have wanted things from her her whole life. Wanted her to be the Last Uchiha, wanted her eyes, wanted her to stay in Konoha, wanted her to kill them so they could atone for killing the clan - everyone wants something. And when she couldn’t deliver, it went bad. She was never given the option of saying no.</p><p>When… when Ino pulled her aside and said, “I wanted to check if you knew,” Sasuke had laughed at her.</p><p>“I’m a big girl,” she’d said. “I think I can handle a guy with a crush.”</p><p>“You’re a bundle of trauma stuck together with mochi,” Ino corrected, then waved it off as unimportant. “I’m not saying you can’t handle it. I’m saying you’re wilfully oblivious, and as your friend, I thought you’d prefer to know.”</p><p>Maybe, but Sasuke was only wilfully oblivious when she was facing a truth she didn’t like, and she’d stuck her tongue out at Ino and accused her of fishing for gossip. Teasingly; Ino used gossip as a finely honed weapon of information gathering, and they both knew she’d never turn it against her friends.</p><p>Still, it was enough to change the topic. Ino rolled her eyes and shoved at Sasuke’s shoulder, Sasuke took an exaggerated step back and feigned outrage in return, and in the back of her mind she considered the crush for all of two seconds before putting it aside for later.</p><p>Except, when Ino left, she turned back and said, “Naras don’t crush. Please don’t break his heart, I like you too much to kill you in your sleep.”</p><p>Naras don’t crush.</p><p>“It doesn’t mean anything,” she told Urushi later. “She wasn’t saying I <em>had</em> to return his feelings. That’s not how feelings work.” He rolled over, regarding her carefully from his upside down position as he tried to work out if he should get up and come over to pay proper attention or not. “She just meant I should let him down gently. If I let him down. Obviously I’m not going to break his heart, who does that.” She chewed her lip. Urushi righted himself and trotted over to park his chin on her knee, tail wagging hopefully as he looked up at her. “I don’t have to <em>do</em> anything,” she repeated. “It’s not how feelings work. I know that.”</p><p>She did. She did, and she abandoned the trail of thought in favour of scratching behind his ears, but at the same time -</p><p>Shikamaru wanted something from her. She didn’t know how to give it. She trusted him, but she’d been in this situation before - different things that people wanted, same outcome even so. They were never happy for her to refuse. She didn’t believe for a second that Shikamaru would force her, but what if he left? If he decided she wasn’t worth it if she wouldn’t be what he wanted, if she tried and failed and he left because she <em>couldn’t</em> be what he wanted, or if he’d - not force her, but persuade her, push and push and push and never enough to count as <em>bad</em> but enough that she couldn’t get away -</p><p>She clamped down on the fears. Shikamaru couldn’t know. Crush, not crush, didn’t matter; nothing had to change, and if he wasn’t going to say anything, then she didn’t see why she had to either.</p><p>Except, Shikamaru kept not saying anything. He didn’t even drop any hints or cautiously test the waters. Not that there weren’t signs, and now that she knew what to look for, Sasuke could see them, but they weren’t intentional. She didn’t think. He caught himself sometimes, jerking his eyes away as though they’d lingered on her too long even though they hadn’t done. The overreaction was more noticeable than the staring. Sometimes he was a beat too slow to react to something, sometimes he half-misstepped when they sparred and turned it into a different movement so smoothly she doubted he’d ever done it.</p><p>She didn’t like doubting. She couldn’t ask him, and he seemed determined not to bring it up, so. She tested it. An extra stretch, a grappling hold that pressed them a little closer than the one she’d normally use, a flash of smile over her shoulder as she walked away. He reacted to every single one, so minutely and well-controlled that if Sasuke were anyone else who knew him any fraction less she wouldn’t have caught it, but he never said a word.</p><p>She rolled towards him in the middle of the night. It was winter, his blanket wasn’t thick enough, she’d done it a thousand times before. If he was asleep, he curled round her. If he was awake, he was careful not to touch. Either way he’d be up before her in the morning, and there’d be no steam in the bathroom from his shower.</p><p>It was <em>fascinating.</em> Any worries she’d had vanished in the face of this new, interesting - interesting what? Game, toy, phenomenon, <em>thing</em> she’d discovered she could make Shikamaru do. Maybe it was a little bit thoughtless, maybe she got a bit caught up in the unfamiliar thrill of being wanted for something <em>she</em> was in control of handing out, maybe she took it a step too far without thinking through the consequences, but come on. Come <em>on.</em></p><p>Winter melted into spring. They went to the sakura festival together, Sasuke in the sparkliest kimono she could find - it had silver glitter-thread picking out ripples on the blue-silk water, the koi shimmered with sequins for each pearly scale, she’d swapped her red earrings for white-gold studs and hanging sapphires to match - Urushi in a clean and brushed version of his fur (that was fun; baths weren’t among the usual repertoire of things summons had to deal with, but since he’d been stuck in the human realm Urushi had become something of a pro) and Shikamaru, grudgingly, in a dark green yukata with his usual getup underneath. Sans the vest. Festivals were not for clunky ninja vests, Shikamaru. They were for shiny things and crepes, and mountains of pink sugar cubes shaped into tiny flower sweets.</p><p>She says they went together; they went as a group, a large one, loud to begin with and only made louder once Lee started issuing challenges and Kiba set his wheelchair to maximum power and refused to be left behind.</p><p>“There’s no way on earth,” Sasuke said pleasantly. “It’s <em>march.</em> Are you mad? <em>You</em> jump off the hokage monument and see who can make the biggest splash in the river, I’ll stay here where it’s dry and not freeze to death in the aftermath.”</p><p>“We’ll be kept warm by the fires of youth in our hearts!”</p><p>“My fire of youth is malfunctioning,” Shikamaru drawled. “I’ll have to be kept warm by takoyaki instead.”</p><p>Chouji perked up. “Takoyaki? I could -”</p><p>“- Join our team for splash purposes, fabulous idea, Sakura you’re with us too let’s go.”</p><p>Sakura snorted, but joined Ino in herding Chouji after the others, and threw a wave back at Sasuke as she went.</p><p>“... Huh,” Sasuke said. “I didn’t think they’d all go.” She blinked, looked at the paper festival lights illuminating the late evening around them and the bustle of colour and people, and compared it to the feeling of belly-flopping into cold water and emerging soaking wet to shiver on the banks. “I’m fairly certain our friends are insane.”</p><p>“Insane,” Shikamaru repeated tightly. “Sure. That must be it. Did you want takoyaki too?”</p><p>“Uh.” She hadn’t thought he’d been serious about that either, but apparently her guesses were destined to be wrong. “Yes?”</p><p>“Wait here, I won’t be long.”</p><p>“I can come - with… you?” She stared after his retreating back, nose wrinkled in confusion. “Or not. Waiting here, sounds lovely. I like waiting. It’s great.”</p><p>Urushi whined questioningly. She shook her head, then dropped a hand to run over his fur. “Who knows,” she asked, and turned away to find a spot near the railings where they wouldn’t be in the way. For a temporary barrier set up to keep, um, <em>merry</em> festival goers from falling the river - this part a good deal shallower than where the others were headed - they were surprisingly pretty, made out of painted wood with raised lanterns hanging over them every few paces or so. Sasuke leant her elbows on a section just under one of the lanterns, looking out over the river and idly tracking how the ripples on the water made the reflections seem to dance.</p><p>They had another mission in the morning. One to Iron, just her and Shikamaru. Urushi was staying with Kakashi until they got back. He was fast, and an excellent tracker, but he wasn’t the greatest at stealth.</p><p>She took a lot of stealth missions. She took a lot of missions she could bring Urushi on as well, and she and Shikamaru worked as seamlessly together when he was there as when he wasn’t. The two of them had only once had to complete a mission without her - she’d got separated from them early on, it was one of those ridiculous scenarios that sounded made up when she’d tried to explain to Sakura and Naruto and she was determined to forget it ever happened because sometimes the ninja world made no <em>sense</em> - but they’d worked seamlessly together then as well.</p><p>At least. They’d said they did, and Sasuke didn’t think either of them had been lying. They’d never shown any signs of not getting on; Shikamaru was surprisingly laid back about the way Urushi occupied most of the foot of the bed, Urushi was just as likely to sprawl across Shikamaru’s lap for scritches if Sasuke was busy with something else. Not that Sasuke would expect them <em>not</em> to get on, and anyway, Urushi was a delight so that would be ridiculous - there was maybe a bit of dog hair around in shedding season, he maybe shook the rain out all over the kitchen if he’d just come in from a storm, but seriously, he’s a good dog. Anyone would love him. Everyone <em>did</em> love him. Sasuke wasn’t even sure why she was thinking about this.</p><p>… Everyone loved Urushi, but not everyone lived with him. Shikamaru didn’t even, not really. Sasuke still nominally lived with Naruto, even if she spent as much time at the Nara compound as with him. Even so, there was something… nice about the fact that Shikamaru and Urushi fit together like that. Comforting. Comfortable? It made her happy. That they liked each other. It was just.</p><p>Nice.</p><p>God, what was she even saying. Maudlin load of - she shook herself, pushing off from the railing and letting the smile drop from her face. <em>Nice.</em> Seriously? Who stares dopily out over the river at night, thinking about things being <em>nice?</em> People who were told to wait, apparently. Where was Shikamaru anyway, surely it’d been long enough that -</p><p>“Here,” he said, stepping up beside her. “I wasn’t sure which toppings you wanted, I just got them all.”</p><p>Sasuke took it from him, tilting her head curiously. “All toppings is good. I like toppings.” The juice had soaked into the cardboard tray the takoyaki came in - not a lot, but more than it should’ve done in the time it took to walk back from the stand. And they were - not cold, but. Not as hot as they should’ve been either.</p><p>“Well. Good.” Shikamaru waved his own tray at her in a completely pointless movement, and abruptly turned to the river. It was difficult to tell in the orange light of the lantern, but Sasuke thought he was… blushing? “What were you thinking about?”</p><p>She put it aside, but didn’t forget about it. “Urushi. He’s the best dog.” He looked up at his name, tail wagging, and she couldn’t help but smile again as she looked down at him. Her on the left, Shikamaru on the right, Urushi sat between them with his tail sweeping across the floor - that feeling came back, warm and fuzzy and <em>nice,</em> and she ducked her head to hide it. “He has good taste in people.”</p><p>Shikamaru made an odd sound, too quiet to be laughter, too fond to be anything else. “Because he chose you?” he teased, except that was too fond as well, it didn’t quite sound like teasing. Even when Sasuke flicked her gaze up to him to check she wasn’t sure, the lantern made a lot of things difficult to see. His face was lit by a soft orange glow, his shoulders were just slightly angled towards her, and his eyes were dark and warm and -</p><p>“I’m good people,” she said archly, and stuffed two takoyaki in her mouth at once.</p><p> </p><p>Anyway. Back to the present tense.</p><p>That mission to Iron wasn’t the start of it, not by a long shot, but after it things changed. What was meant to be fun turned into something - not serious. But. Serious. Not as in <em>serious</em>, but as in, not really a game anymore. That’s not right; that makes it sound like she hadn’t cared about Shikamaru’s feelings before, which wasn’t true, she’d just reasoned that if he was happy to hide them then it wasn’t like it was <em>hurting</em> anyone to steal his shirt and watch the way his eyes went wide when he noticed, was it?</p><p>Except, maybe, it could. It depended where it went. Best case scenario, she never said anything, he never said anything, he’d get over it and somewhere down the line they’d both laugh about those hilarious few months he spent taking cold showers and thinking no one noticed. Worst case scenario -</p><p>“<em>Kids,</em>” she moaned to Sakura, flinging herself back on the grass. “What if - I don’t want kids. I can’t. Me? <em>Parent?</em> This is not a mummy, this is a <em>mess.</em>”</p><p>“Hello to you too,” Sakura said, nodding at Urushi to include him in the greeting as well. “Why are you having kids?”</p><p>“I’m <em>not.</em> I’m pretty sure I can’t, anyway.” She paused for a moment to consider; did she have eggs? Or. Sperm? She knew she couldn’t <em>carry</em> them, but in theory if she donated - “<em>No.</em> No more sharingan. The world can’t handle them, it fucked up too many times and it’s not getting another chance. No kids.”</p><p>“Ok. No kids.”</p><p>“See, <em>you</em> say that, but what if - what if <em>someone else</em> didn’t understand? They might want kids. Kids might be wanted. Generally. Non-specifically. Family’s important, right?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sakura agreed with a rather dangerous finality to her tone, “but you don’t want kids. If anyone - generally or specifically - doesn’t understand that, let me know and I’ll explain.” She wasn’t wearing her chainsaws. Sasuke knew this, because Sasuke had the chainsaws in question on her kitchen worktop, waiting for a refill of poison. Sasuke also knew exactly what that flex of muscles in Sakura’s wrist was meant to do, and she experienced a sudden doubt that Sakura’s explanation would be survivable.</p><p>“But family,” she protested weakly.</p><p>“But you,” Sakura countered.</p><p>Which. There wasn’t much to be said in response to that.</p><p>And that’s kind of the problem, really. There isn’t much to be said in response to any of it. Sasuke has <em>no idea</em> how to bring it up with Shikamaru. Not a single part of it. The whole thing would be so much easier if she could just, just be a <em>functioning human being</em> and like him back, but, but - <em>nyergh.</em></p><p>She doesn’t know how. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, hair hanging wet around her face, smears on the glass from where she wiped the steam off - no cold showers for <em>her</em> thank you, she might not be a functioning human being but she’s not an abomination either - and she tries.</p><p>She’s got a lot better at looking at herself. She picks out the parts of her that look like her mother. The parts of her that look like her brother. The parts of her that look like her. In the back of her mind, still, there’s that little voice that points out the parts that aren’t feminine, that calculates how, if she was in the mood to wear make-up, she could tweak and trick and round all her sharp edges out - but it’s easily ignorable and not what she’s looking for today.</p><p>She steps back until she can see everything except for her knees and feet in the mirror, and lets the towel drop to the floor. Sweeps her eyes down over herself - not critically, not detachedly, she doesn’t know what adjective she’s meant to use but she knows what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to see what he sees. She wants to look at herself and see - god, not even that she’s attractive. She knows she’s pretty, even if it’s in a slightly more androgynous way than she’d sometimes like. Delicate features, toned physique; she looks good in a kimono and she looks good in pyjamas, she’s not - she’s <em>dealt</em> with that, that’s not the problem here.</p><p>Standing in the mirror, looking back at her, is a naked person. There is a scar on their lower abdomen from the skin graft used in their sex change surgery, but other than that, you wouldn’t know they’d ever been a boy. There are other scars, from kunai, or swords, or fire jutsu or slicing wind or - every ninja has scars. The skin graft doesn’t even stand out much. It only matters because of how it happened, it doesn’t change anything about how she looks. She just looks… like a girl. Woman.</p><p>Like… like someone desirable, she thinks. Like someone who a person could look at, and want to touch. And. And like someone who could… touch someone back.</p><p>“Oh my god,” she breathes, giving in for a second and crossing her arms over herself. “Fucking hell Uchiha, get a <em>grip.</em>”</p><p>She gives herself three seconds, then stands up straight again, aggressively so - shoulders back, chest forward, one foot in front of the other so her legs are slightly crossed and her hips look larger above them. She fixes her gaze on all the pale skin in the mirror and tries to picture a tanned hand against it, resting on her side then sliding possessively forwards over her stomach. His other arm reaching around her chest, fingers skimming over the pink of her -</p><p>“Nope. <em>Nope.</em> Nope. I! Am <em>fine.</em> I’m fine! I’m <em>damn</em> fine, I’m, I’m hella fine, I’m a fine example of a person, people do things, I can do things, I’m - a <em>sexual being who does sexy things</em> holy frick I’m out.”</p><p>The towel wraps over her head. She’s not fully dry yet, and for a second her thoughts catch on the idea of the water droplets running down between her breasts and Shikamaru - “<em>Pyjamas</em>,” she announces with a manic grin, and stubbornly ignores the way they stick to her damp skin.</p><p>Dressed, second towel retrieved to wrap around her shoulders for added, uh, warmth<em>,</em> feet hastily scrubbed against the bathmat so she won’t leave wet footprints on the floor, she’s done. She marches out of the bathroom with a determined stride and heads straight to the freezer.</p><p>“... Sasuke?” Naruto asks, blinking at her from the kitchen table. He shares a glance with Urushi, but Urushi has no idea. “Is… everything good?”</p><p>“I’m a sexual being,” Sasuke insists, and retreats to the bedroom with a litre carton of ice cream cradled against her chest.</p><p>There’s a pause, then Naruto calls from behind her, “Do you want a spoon?”</p><p>Shit. With all the intelligence of one of Konoha’s top stealth jounins, Sasuke considers her ice cream, then shifts her chakra to fire and shapes her hands in the first seal of a jutsu. “Sorted,” she yells back, and settles in for an evening of drinking her emotions away.</p><p>They aren’t even <em>emotions.</em> It’s just. Supreme, overwhelming <em>embarrassment.</em> She physically cannot comprehend that Shikamaru’s attracted to her - or that she might be attracted to him - without the sheer awkwardness of everything involved rising up and swallowing her whole. She’d rather shrivel up and turn inside out than consider it. She just. She doesn’t.</p><p>“And!” she tells Urushi around a mouthful of <strike>ice</strike> cream when he trots into the room to check she’s still alive. “It’s <em>messy.</em> There’s all these bodily fluids and shit - not actual shit, that would be - <em>anyway,</em> there’s, <em>things,</em> and shower sex is never as convenient as people make it out to be so it’s not like you can even stay clean that way - though. Ninja? Maybe shower sex is easier for ninja.” She pauses, considers it in a purely abstract sense, and decides that there’s no way they’d both fit under the spray at once. Her brain then provides her with an image of the cold tiles pressing against her back while the hot water runs down her front, Shikamaru’s hands under her thighs to hold her up and -</p><p>“Nyerkoble <em>eck,</em>” she declares intelligibly, and shots enough pink slurry to choke on. She thinks it’s meant to be cherry. It doesn’t taste of cherry, but it’s the sakura time of year, everywhere’s brought out a random pink flavour and decided to call it cherry. It’s how the world works. The lovely, pg-13, <em>normal</em> world that concerns itself with food. Food is <em>nice.</em> Lovely food. She <em>likes</em> food.</p><p>Didn’t people use food in sex though -</p><p>She whimpers. Urushi wriggles his head under her arm and reaches up to lick her chin, and she abandons her melted ice cream to hug him instead. “I think my libido hates me,” she says miserably into his fur. “I was doing fine without it. Existing like this is entirely uncalled for. I’m suffering.”</p><p>He noses at her ear in sympathy and she buries her face in his shoulder and waits for the world to go away.</p><p> </p><p>“Um, about earlier -”</p><p>“<em>Delete from memory.</em>”</p><p>“Yeah, ok.”</p><p> </p><p>The next day, she has a plan. It’s a good plan. An excellent - it’s going to go horribly wrong but it’ll be better than leaving the situation to get worse by itself, it’ll <em>do.</em></p><p>She’s going to tell Shikamaru.</p><p>She has to. He’s - he’s <em>pining</em>. And he’s too much of a damn idiot to do anything about his pining, which means he’s going to tragically fade into heartbreak and Ino’s going to have to make good on her promise to murder Sasuke horribly in revenge, and then Naruto will cry and Urushi will probably do something ridiculous and heroic and get himself killed as well so Kakashi will be left with no choice but to declare war on the Yamanakas and -</p><p>But the point is, Shikamaru will be sad. Is sad. Is he sad? He’s fallen in love with someone who can’t love him back. Not even for any real reason, just because she’s <em>awkward.</em> And, love him or not, she’s still his partner. She’s meant to be the one who rescues him when he gets himself stuck in stupid situations like this.</p><p>Or. Not exactly like this, but. Close enough.</p><p>She bites her lip.</p><p>“I can’t just leave it like this,” she justifies to Urushi. “It’s not fair to him. I mean, look at his parents - that’s what he wants, right? Papa Nara and Mama Nara, he’d want what they have. They love each other. His mum’s really nice. Everything’s all… calm.” </p><p>It’s one of her favourite things about the Nara compound. The calm. It’s one of her favorite things about Shikamaru as well - sometimes she looks at herself and all she sees are sharp edges and jagged hurts, lashing out at the world because why the hell not and cutting anyone who tries to get close. Not always, and a lot less now than when she was younger, but even when she’s happy she feels everything too much. She doesn’t know how not to. Things are or they aren’t; moderation has never been her style.</p><p>And Shikamaru makes it ok. He’s grounding; she careens through life and turns around and throws herself completely into whatever she does, and he’s always there with her. Steady, where she’s anything but. Not steady slow, because he’s not, and as much as he follows her strange leaps of intuition he spends as much time two steps ahead with logic; she means steady as in… solid. Steady solid.</p><p>That’s an awful way to describe it. She doesn’t have a better word. He’s like - like mossy covered roots on the forest floor, like that moment in the middle of the night when it’s still and dark and nothing bad can reach you, like everything racing around her head until tiny problems become screaming panic but she looks at Shikamaru and they stop. Like leaning back against him on a mission, pulling his arm around her for warmth and Urushi climbs over both of them to curl up in the space between.</p><p>He’s like that.</p><p>And she’s a bundle of trauma stuck together with mochi.</p><p>“This is so damn <em>stupid</em>,” she hisses. “No. <em>No,</em> fuck that - self pity is <em>banned</em> in this household, we threw it out and it’s never coming back. Either Shikamaru likes me for me, or he wants me to be someone else, and if he wants me to be someone else then - then so what. I’m not. And if he doesn’t then, then I’m not going to just <em>decide</em> everything’s shit before it’s had a chance to actually <em>be</em> shit, that’s ridiculous. Who does that? Mopey people. I don’t mope. New rule, Urushi. Moping’s banned, same as self pity - and dithering! It’s a waste of time. We go to Shikamaru, we find a way to bring it up, we, we <em>talk</em> like competent talking people and then it’s fine. It’s fine! And if it isn’t, we’ll make it be, and <em>that’s</em> fine too.”</p><p>She nods. She has a plan. A good plan. <em>Excellent</em> plan. She dares it not to be, she’s willing to fight for this damn plan, and no one’s going to stop her.</p><p>It’ll be <em>great</em>.</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t manage to tell him that day. Or that night. She stays with him, because she can’t leave until she’s done the plan, but she can’t do the plan until - she’ll know it when it happens. It has to be the right moment.</p><p>She doesn’t manage to tell him the next morning either, but she does steal his shirt while he’s in the shower, and that’s a mistake. She did it on autopilot; she was feeling rattled, she likes things that remind her of him. He’s finger-combing his hair when he comes back in the room, and his hand freezes mid-motion when he sees her. Even when it starts moving again his breathing is suspiciously even and measured and he doesn’t quite look her way.</p><p>Oops.</p><p>She forgot he had a thing about her wearing his shirt. She isn’t sure if it’s because it’s his, or because the mesh is - well, still decent enough to wear, but. Mesh. So. Not by much.</p><p>And as ridiculous as it is, she can’t help that tiny, confidence-boosting spark she feels at his reaction. It’s what got her into this problem in the first place; there’s something addictive about it, about the fact that he wants her but in a way that still leaves her in control. That break in his composure, the way he’s distracted and trying to hide it but can’t - <em>she </em>did that. Maybe not on purpose this time, maybe that hadn’t been why she’d put on his shirt instead of her own, maybe it makes no sense to be so hung up about people wanting things from her but then turn around and, and fucking <em>preen</em> when it’s Shikamaru, but -</p><p>Hold up, she doesn’t preen. What. No. And it’s different with Shikamaru. He wants, but at a distance. He’s not acting on the wanting. It’s different.</p><p>… He’s not acting on the wanting <em>yet.</em> She has a sudden need to know how far that goes. She’s just. Curious. Just curious. It’s important. She wears his shirt and he’s distracted, but nothing else; what if she wore <em>only</em> his shirt. He’s taller than her, the shirt is long enough that it could, almost, qualify as a dress. A short one. The sort of short where if she sat on the counter and let her knees fall open he’d be able to -</p><p>“Oh my god,” she mouths, turning away so he can’t see. She has never been more grateful in her <em>life</em> that Uchihas don’t blush. Except for her ears. Those are scarlet, based on how hot they feel. But seriously, the <em>counter?</em> The only counters in the house are in the kitchen, she’s not sitting on them. That’s. It’s unhygienic. Did her brain ever think of <em>that</em> before presenting her with, with entirely unnecessary, uncalled for, unwarranted - <em>listen.</em> No. Just. <em>No.</em></p><p>The urge to see how far she can push him doesn’t go away. She refuses to acknowledge it, but that doesn’t stop it being <em>there</em>, and her head’s so busy resolutely ignoring her baser instincts (<em>baser instincts</em> what the fuck is this) that she misses the damn wire trap Shikamaru tries to catch her with when they spar.</p><p>A wire trap. Her. Caught in a - you know what, it’s an off day. It doesn’t count. Moving on.</p><p>But then, see, he’s pinning her down, she’s an impulsive person by nature, she’s feeling stung that she let him get her in this position in the first place and part of her <em>still</em> wants to know how far she can push him before everything goes tits up and breaks -</p><p>She kisses him.</p><p>Um.</p><p>And then bullshits something about a poisonous lipstick to cover her slip. You know, like competent people do.</p><p>Things… happen. After that. She didn’t mean for them to happen that way, necessarily, but it felt like a good idea at the time, and at least she knows now that - that Shikamaru will always let her say no.</p><p>It looked like he was tearing himself part when he agreed to it, but. He agreed. And he was so relieved when she didn’t hold him to it, but if she had, if she’d <em>meant</em> it then he’d’ve done it. He didn’t - She can - Whichever reason Shikamaru cares about her for, whatever it is that makes him stay, it’s not conditional on her giving him what he wants.</p><p>She doesn’t know what to do with that.</p><p>God, that sounds so - look at Sasuke, poor little Sasuke, so mistreated by everyone around her that she has no concept of people being nice without it having a catch. <em>Bollocks.</em> That’s not the point, that’s not what all this is about. It’s about the fact that everything’s a transaction, even love, and when people love you you have to love them back, or at the very least you have to acknowledge that they love you and change how you act to take it into account. Love is a claim, even if people say it isn’t; there might not be anything <em>physical</em> stopping Sasuke leaving Konoha behind to rot - let’s face it, there never had been - but the fact that she’d be hurting so many people if she did? The fact that so many people, completely outside her control, decide to attach themselves to her, to hold <em>themselves</em> hostage and force her to change her plans to accommodate them? She didn’t <em>ask </em>them to. She didn’t want them to.</p><p>Even if she had left, they wouldn’t have let her go.</p><p>Team Seven nearly didn’t survive that whole mess. Not as Team Seven. If she hadn’t had Chouji, if there hadn’t been someone she could retreat to who never demanded anything of her, if if if. It’s in the past now - it doesn’t matter. She had Chouji, Chouji and Urushi and Kakashi and fish and Team Seven survived, it doesn’t <em>matter</em> now.</p><p>They’re better now. She’s better now. Life’s better now. She lives with Naruto again, she and Sakura and working together to try to do something about the mess of clan-civilian politics, she genuinely enjoys running missions with Shikamaru. She feels like things are where they’re meant to be. She was happy with where things were meant to be.</p><p>When Ino had first told her that Shikamaru liked her, Sasuke's immediate response had been to dismiss it. She’s only wilfully oblivious when she’s facing a truth she’s afraid of. And now, in one move, Shikamaru’s taken all those fears and just… got rid of them.</p><p>And she doesn’t know what to do.</p><p>“And now you’re caught up,” she concludes, kicking her heels out so they splash against the surface of the pond. A couple of the koi swim up to inspect the ripples, but most of them are familiar enough with her habits to ignore it. They’re even familiar enough with Urushi to ignore him when they need to, but Sasuke isn’t going to tell him that. If she couldn’t convince him that he scared the fish when he leapt in the pond, she’d never be able to get him out. It’s not lying. It’s creative interpretations of - it’s lying, but it’s lying with a purpose, and if you’d ever tried to get the mud out his fur after he’d been swimming you’d do the same, don’t judge.</p><p>“Shikamaru and I are dating, which is great, and not terrifying, and I love it, but I also kissed him and the problem is that I don’t do naked and I feel this maybe is a thing I should address.” She pauses, squinting at the lotus plants as she considers. The lower leaves, fanning out over the surface of the water, have been up for a week or so now, and there are green shoots coming as the tightly furled upper leaves start to appear. No buds yet - it’s been a cooler spring than some years, they’re lagging a bit behind - but just from the leaves she can tell they’re spreading too far again. She’ll need to rearrange some of their tubers when they’ve finished flowering or the fish will complain about there being too much shade over the pond.</p><p>“I don’t… not do naked,” she says slowly. Or rather, “It’s not that I don’t want to do naked. And I know I said at the start that I didn’t <em>like</em> like him, but.” She tries to find a way to explain it. They’re fish, naked is a difficult enough concept for them to grasp as it is. “When I kissed him, I wasn’t… It wasn’t about the kissing. Or the - I mean, I was touching him, I fucking <em>straddled</em> him, but I wasn’t, um. That wasn’t what I was thinking about. And when you kiss someone you like, you’re meant to, it’s meant to be the focus, right? Not. Not kissing them to prove a point. Or to get a reaction, or. Things.”</p><p>There was only a small amount of grass in the garden, just in the part directly in front of the house. The rest was plants, with rocks and gravel cutting a curving path through them, and bark chippings covering any bare soil where she was waiting for things to grow. It was enough grass for Urushi to sprawl out on his back and absorb the morning sunshine, but she didn’t have a use for it other than that. It was a bit out of place, actually. Maybe she should expand the pond instead - she could put a bridge over it. One with the railings, set at the right height that if you sat on the bridge you could put your elbows on the lower railing and lean on it, that would be good.</p><p>“I don’t even know why it’s a problem,” she says frustratedly. “It’s just kissing. But if I think about it, then it turns into all these other things, and then I freak out. It’s not even like I think it’s <em>bad</em>, we’re grown ups and I know he’d stop if I told him to, but getting my head around someone doing things to me - <em>nyergh.</em> No.” She pulls one knee up, wrapping her arms around it and dropping her head on it hard enough to leave a red mark on her forehead. “Embarrassment is bullshit. Who invented that? Evolution’s about surviving, right, what possible way could being <em>embarrassed</em> ever save my life? It’s <em>shit.</em>”</p><p>She lifts her head and thunks it back down again, just because. It doesn’t really help her think. Stress relieving, maybe. “Someone doing things to me,” she repeats. “<em>Shikamaru</em> doing things. It’s not even some random person, I <em>like</em> Shikamaru.” Although, that’s a thought. Maybe it’s because it’s Shikamaru. Maybe she got everything mixed up in her mind about Shikamaru wanting things from her and those things being naked things and <em>that’s</em> what made naked bad. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with naked at all.</p><p>It sounds tenuous, but it’s worth a shot.</p><p>“Not Shikamaru,” she repeats, keeping her face hidden in her arms. Not Shikamaru. Someone to test her theory on that isn’t Shikamaru.</p><p>Sakura? She trusts Sakura. And Sakura’s stupidly strong, that’s got to be a thing.</p><p>She tries to picture it: Sakura lifting her up so she could wrap her legs round her waist, Sasuke looping her arms round behind Sakura’s neck, then using that position to…</p><p>She draws a blank.</p><p>Sakura’s hands would be occupied holding her up. Sasuke’s hands are now occupied by being put over Sakura’s shoulders. Where the hell does she take it from there. On the plus side, it’s not the same kind of world-ending awkward as before; on the down side, it’s a whole new kind of awkward that’s just. Awkward.</p><p>She lifts her head to stare incredulously at the fish. “Am I <em>straight?</em>” One of them comes up to check on the foot she’s still dangling in the water, then swims away when it doesn’t turn out to be food.</p><p>“Ok. Well, um. Dudes.”</p><p>Obviously the first one that comes to mind is Naruto. She takes one of the memories of their movie nights, packing the sofa with cushions and blankets and settling in for an evening of laughing at how terrible the fight scenes are. Naruto always chooses romances because he’s a closet sap and an unabashed Lady Yukie fan. She’s not even sure how much of it stems from that time they rescued her in the land of Snow and how much is just Naruto loving stories with a happy ending, but they’ve watched pretty much all her films by now and a fair few of her other shows as well.</p><p>So, movie night. Blankets. Pyjamas, ramen for Naruto, omelet rice for Sasuke. For the sake of practicality she relegates memory-Urushi to the other room, and sets things up so that she’s leaning against Naruto with one of his arms slung over her, her legs curled on the sofa beside her and his facing forwards to the floor. Stage set, actors in place: go.</p><p>Do the thing.</p><p>Sexy times.</p><p>… This isn’t working. Imaginary Naruto is too comfy, she doesn’t want to move. She can get as far as tilting her head back to look up at him, and then she remembers that they’ve done this before and the next step is for Naruto to slurp his noodles really loudly and cheer when the pirates get introduced on the screen.</p><p>“Listen,” she tells her brain. “When I don’t want to think of people doing things, you show me people doing things. When I literally ask you for hotness, I get ramen. <em>Pull yourself together.</em>”</p><p>She’s lived with Naruto too long. That’s it. Obviously, she should’ve known better than to pick him. She needs someone she’s less familiar with, someone where she can actually <em>imagine</em> instead of everything getting clouded with memories. She needs…</p><p>Kiba. Let’s go with Kiba. He’s hot, with the hair and the tan and the fanged smirk thing he does. All she has to do is successfully picture an, an encounter with him, and not get everything tangled up in emotions, and then she’ll have proved to herself that her reaction to naked is entirely over the top and she can reevaluate the Shikamaru problem with logic and reason on her side and everything can be sorted and ignored.</p><p>So.</p><p>She’d… kneel, she thinks. One knee either side of his hips, his hands gripping her thighs, she’d be able to feel the claws pressing against her skin. The position would make her tall enough to put her hands on his shoulders, make him tilt his head back to look up at her. When he went to kiss her, he wouldn’t be able to reach; he’d kiss her collarbone instead, his lips trailing along -</p><p>Or, or she could push him down so he’s lying flat on his back, that works too. Unzip his vest, work him out of it and then tug on his shirt to ruck that up and leave his abs exposed. Run her hands down them, watch the muscles twitch as she ghosts her fingers over them. He’d try to sit back up; she’d let him, but only so she could pull the shirt over his head, getting it caught in his ponytail as she does. When it’s gone it’d take the hair tie with it; she’d gather his hair in her hands, use it to angle his head where she wants it to be. He’d be looking up at her, eyes dark, his gaze would be hot and heavy but softened with that unbearable fondness like at the festival in the lantern light -</p><p>“What part,” she mumbles into her knee, “of <em>not Shikamaru</em> did you fail to understand. This is ridiculous<em>.</em>”</p><p>Why is being a functioning human being so damn hard. Not even - not even a functioning human being! You don’t need libidos to function. Asexual is a thing, a great thing, Sasuke would be <em>delighted</em> to be asexual. Just think, being able to survive spending time around her partner - her partner, might she add, who she has to complete missions with in frequent life-or-death situations and who she can’t damn well afford to be distracted by all the time - spending time around him <em>without</em> her brain providing her an image of how he could use his shadow to hold her still while he -</p><p>“Oh my <em>god</em> fucking <em>why.</em>”</p><p>Nope. She’s done. She’s done! She tried, she failed, time to go back to bed. She can’t <em>do this.</em></p><p>“Hey Shikamaru,” she says without lifting her head. “You know how you were happy to leave things as they were except I kissed you and made a big thing about it and you kept trying to talk but I have no chill and initiated a make out session instead? Yeah, if we could never speak of it again and just pretend it didn’t happen, that’d be great. No, no reason, I’m actually going to dig a hole under my pond and drown myself now so I never have to see another living creature ever again, that’s all. You know. Normal things.”</p><p>She pauses, then, with feeling: “Fuck.”</p><p>Talking to the fish has not helped.</p><p>That’s not true. It kind of has. She’s worked out that apparently she <em>does</em> like-like Shikamaru, she’s just too incompetent to handle it.</p><p>Revised: talking to the fish has not helped enough. They’re usually better listeners than this.</p><p>She lets herself be outraged by that for all of half a minute, then lets it out in a huff and scrubs her hands through her hair to try and clear her thoughts. “It’s not your fault,” she tells them. “You’re good listeners, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just. Mortally wounded by embarrassment, is all.”</p><p>Though. Though, she wasn’t so embarrassed by the imagine that was meant to be Kiba and that Shikamaru took over, was she? She pauses, thinking it through. She’d startled when she realised it had morphed into Shikamaru, and the reminder of how he’d looked at the festival and how obvious it was that he cared had taken her aback, but. But?</p><p>“I wasn’t naked,” she says, frowning. “I took <em>his</em> clothes off. I wasn’t… was I? I don’t think I even thought about what I was wearing. Just. What I was doing to him.”</p><p>She chews her lip.</p><p>“Maybe,” she decides. It has potential. Quick and easy test: she looks up until she spots a random tree, and pictures being half-dressed with Shikamaru pushing her back against it.</p><p>Embarrassing.</p><p>Delete picture; start again: she pushes a half-dressed Shikamaru back against it.</p><p>Interesting.</p><p>“... Huh.”</p><p>She gives herself a moment, still frowning at the tree and absently worrying at her lip, then nods. “Well. Ok. Sorry to have doubted you, fish. I’ll try your way and let you know how it goes.”</p><p>One of them inspects the rock she’s sitting on for algae, brushing against her ankle as it passes her. She salutes it, and goes to fetch the food pellets, shooting Urushi a warning look so he doesn’t conveniently fall in the pond while she’s gone.</p><p>She and Shikamaru have another mission in a couple of days. A fairly boring bodyguard one, and the only reason it’s gone to them is because the client requested they go undercover. Eight days babysitting a visiting noble in the daimyo’s court… She’s sure she can do something with that.</p><p>After all, she and Shikamaru are dating now. He’s got all these things he wants from her, and maybe she’s allowed to explore some things she wants from him as well. The beautiful thing is that she doesn’t <em>have</em> to give him anything, and if you take that pressure away, then. Who knows where things could go.</p><p><em>His hand over her mouth to stifle her moan, because someone’s coming round the corner and they can’t be seen </em>-</p><p>She trips over the step into the kitchen and claps her hands over her ears to hide the blush.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Shikamaru: Nobody knows I like Sasuke. Not a single soul. I've hid it so well.<br/>Their entire friendship group, hiding in the bushes after lying about jumping off the Hokage monument: Has he kissed her yet??</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>